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tihraxy  of  trhe  theological  ^tminavy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 
PRESENTED  BY 

Professor  F.  Vf.  Loetscher 


BV  4310  .C33 

Campbell,  R.  J.  1867-1956 

The  choice  of  the  highest 


THE  CHOICE 
THE  HIGHEST 


City  Temple  Talks  to  Young  Men 


y 


BY 


R.  J.  CAMPBELL 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming    H.    Revell     Company 

London    and    Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1904,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  63  Washington  Street 
Toronto:  27  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:    30  St.  Mary  Street 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I.  The  Choice  of  the  Highest 

II.  The  Day  of  Decision 

III.  Spiritual  Manhood 

IV.  The  Two  Sons,  The  Two  Destinies 

V.  Other-Worldliness 

VI.  Ambition,  True  and  False 

VII.  Moral  Response  to  Spiritual  Vision 

VIII.  The  Struggle  with  Temptation 

IX.  The  Two  Sides  of  Temptation 
X.'  The  Larger  Forgiveness    . 
XI.  The  Sheltering  Manhood  . 


PAGE 

9 

29 

45 
65 
85 
105 
125 
145 
163 
183 
199 


I 

THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

Our  God  whom  we  serve  is  able  to  deliver  us 
from  the  burning  fiery  furnace;  and  He  will  deliver 
us.   .   .   .  But  if  not. — Dan.  Hi.  77,  j8. 

THESE  words  represent  the  g-rand 
challenge  of  the  human  heart  against 
evil  fate.  This  book  was  worth  the 
writing  if  only  because  of  the  thrilling  lesson  it 
conveys  to  us  in  the  testimony  of  the  three 
Hebrew  children  in  the  presence  of  death.  It 
matters  little  how  we  regard  the  story,  whether 
as  history  or  as  allegory,  or  partly  one  and 
partly  the  other,  so  long  as  we  learn  this  par- 
ticular lesson.  A  good  deal  of  time,  I  think, 
has  been  wasted  in  discussions  about  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  and  as  to 
whether  this  particular  dramatic  narrative  is 
actual  and  literal  truth.  Personally,  I  may  say 
frankly  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  it  is  not, 
but  it  has  been  true  in  human  experience  many 
a  time  for  all  that,  and  is  in  essence  true  to- 
day. That  is  why  it  finds  a  place  in  Holy  Writ. 
9 


10     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

The  grandest  victories  of  conscience  have  been 
those  which  have  been  gained  not  only  in  de- 
fiance of  odds,  but  in  contempt  of  reward. 
Those  who  believe  in  the  naturalistic  origin 
of  conscience  forget  that  its  greatest  achieve- 
ments have  not  been  in  line  with,  but  in  de- 
fiance of  popular  sentiment.  They  have  been 
the  victories  of  minorities  rather  than  of  ma- 
jorities. Yet  no  such  sacrifice  has  ever  failed 
or  can  fail.  The  three  Hebrew  children  are  a 
figure  of  the  moral  heroes  of  the  world.  They 
were  not  careful  to  answer  the  tyrant  as  they 
stood  in  the  presence  of  death.  They  did 
not  debate  what  ought  to  be  done  in  mat- 
ters of  conscience.  It  is  often  said  that  in 
questions  of  conduct  first  thoughts  are  best. 
"  We  are  not  careful  to  answer  thee  in  this 
matter.  Our  God  whom  we  serve  is  able  to 
deliver  us,  and  He  will  deliver  us  out  of  thine 
hand;  but  if  not,  we  will  not  serve  thy  gods, 
nor  worship  the  golden  image  which  thou  hast 
set  up." 

"  But  if  not."  They  went  to  the  burning 
fiery  furnace,  from  the  furnace  they  were  res- 
cued, and  the  dramatic  narrative,  I  think, 
reaches  its  highest  altitude  in  the  vision  that 
was  granted  to  the  king.  "  Did  we  not  cast 
three  men  bound  into  the  fiery  furnace?    Lbl 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     11 

I  see  four  men  walking  loose  in  the  midst  of 
the  fire,  and  the  form  of  the  fourth  is  like  unto 
the  Son  of  God." 

I  have  only  two  things  to  say  to  you  arising 
out  of  this  text.  The  first  is  that  the  supreme 
spiritual  need  of  the  hour  is  a  strenuous  mo- 
rality, and  the  second  is  there  is  no  morality 
worthy  of  the  name  that  is  not  bom  in  con- 
flict. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  spiritual  unrest  in 
the  present  time,  and  spiritual  needs  are  being 
voiced  overtly  and  tacitly  on  every  hand.  You 
may  think  it  strange  that  I  say  the  supreme 
spiritual  need  of  the  hour  is  a  strenuous  mo- 
rality. What  has  morality  got  to  do  with  spirit- 
uality? Everything.  There  is  no  spiritual 
truth  which  has  not  a  moral  bearing  and  places 
the  man  who  receives  it  under  a  moral  obliga- 
tion. It  is  a  cheap  spirituality  that  makes  no 
demand  upon  conscience.  I  do  not  wish  to 
identify  morality  with  spirituality,  but  I  de- 
clare they  can  never  be  separated.  To-day  we 
are  confronted  with  two  seemingly  contrasted 
attitudes  of  the  modern  mind  towards  Christi- 
anity. First  we  see  before  us  an  admiration 
for  the  ethical  value  of  Christianity,  for  the 
character  of  its  Founder,  for  the  ideal  which  He 
set  up,  but  along  with  this  there  comes  a  very 


12     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

considerable  and  widespread  distrust  of  its  dog- 
mas. You  cannot  improve  on  Christ — I  do  not 
suppose  you  have  ever  thought  of  doing  so — as 
your  ideal  for  all  that  is  good  in  human  charac- 
ter. You  are  willing  to  pay  Him  homage  now, 
but  you  are  not  quite  sure  of  everything  we  say 
about  Him,  as  to  Who  He  is,  and  what  He 
does,  and  what  view  of  His  personality  we 
ought  to  take.  Has  it  ever  arrested  your  at- 
tention and  struck  you  as  strange  that  God  has 
left  many  an  apparently  open  question,  many 
things  that  may  be  debated,  and  upon  which 
even  good  men  may  differ,  even  such  an  im- 
portant one  as  what  we  are  to  say  about  the 
person  of  Christ,  and  yet  He  has  left  us  in  no 
doubt  whatever  as  to  the  ethical  value  of  the 
Christ?  None  of  you  dare  to  say  at  this  mo- 
ment, or  would  dream  of  saying  that  Christ 
led  you  wrong  in  the  Beatitudes,  or  led  you 
wrong  by  the  example  He  gave,  for  the  mes- 
sage of  Christ  was  Himself  as  well  as  His 
word,  and  the  impression  made  to-day  upon 
human  hearts  by  the  personality  of  Christ  is 
that  which  gives  sanction  to  the  word.  We  feel 
the  Christ,  His  grandeur.  His  purity,  His  holi- 
ness, we  bow  down  before  Him  as  our  moral 
ideal.  God  has,  I  repeat,  left  us  in  some  doubt 
concerning  Who  He  is,  but  He  has  left  us  in 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     13 

no  doubt  concerning  the  duty  of  obedience  to 
what  He  is. 

Now,  I  take  it — at  least  I  trust  it  is  so — that 
I  have  carried  with  me  every  man  so  far.  Lest 
any  of  you  mistake  for  a  moment  where  I 
stand,  let  me  say  this :  Christ  is  my  only  hope 
for  time  and  for  eternity.  As  Mr.  Gladstone 
called  Him,  "  the  one  central  hope  for  our 
poor  wayward  race."  When  I  get  to  the  other 
side  of  death  "  I  hope  to  meet  my  Pilot  face 
to  face,"  and  I  do  not  expect  to  think  less  of 
Christ  then  than  I  think  of  Him  now,  and  I 
think  my  conscience  can  never  place  Him  too 
high.  He  is  worthy  not  only  of  imitation,  but 
of  the  fullest  homage  that  a  man's  heart  can 
render.  Christ  stands  highest,  Christ  stands 
first,  Christ  is  my  God. 

But  about  that  I  am  not  concerned  to  dispute 
at  this  moment.  I  think  Christ  is  not  con- 
cerned so  much  as  to  what  we  say  about  Who 
He  is,  but  He  is  very  greatly  concerned  as  to 
the  obedience  we  render  unto  Him.  Here  I 
venture  to  read  some  words  written  by  a  recent 
biographer.  He  says :  '*  One  cause  of  the 
present  decline  from  old  beliefs  is  a  spiritual 
debility,  a  lack  of  the  power  to  take  energetic 
hold  of  beliefs  even  when  the  reason  has  no 
fault  to  find  with  them."    Is  not  that  true  of  a 


14     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

great  many  of  you?  "Nothing  could  be  im- 
agined more  likely  to  counteract  that  nerveless 
condition  than  an  energetic  attitude  to  human 
life.  Those  who  gladly  and  enthusiastically 
lay  hold  upon  the  ideal  are  the  likeliest  to  at- 
tain to  a  faith  which  deals  robustly  with  that 
which  is  beyond  life."  I  agree  so  thoroughly 
with  that  biographer  that  I  have  chosen  the 
text  which  is  before  us.  God  requires  from  us 
not  merely  saying,  not  merely  professing,  but 
doing,  and  it  is  doing  that  leads  to  spiritual 
certainty.  "  He  that  doeth  the  will  of  My 
Father  which  is  in  heaven,  he  shall  know  of 
the  teaching,  whether  it  be  of  God  or  whether 
I  speak  of  Myself." 

There  is  a  need  to-day  of  warmth  of  devo- 
tion and  moral  enthusiasm  about  the  highest 
things,  which,  after  all,  lie  close  to  us  every 
day.  Poverty  in  these  things  leads  to  pessi- 
mism. Every  spiritual  truth  makes  this  moral 
demand.  The  best  way  for  you  young  men  to 
find  the  truth  about  Christ,  about  God,  about 
Heaven,  is  to  be  good.  The  good  and  the  true 
are  ultimately  one.  Do  one  good  action  and 
the  universe  speaks  back  to  you  its  "Well 
done."  Test  that  truth  for  yourself  in  the  very 
next  opportunity  that  you  have  of  doing  some- 
thing for  your  neighbour  in  the  name  of  God. 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     15 

Is  it  not  Lady  Henry  Somerset  who  some- 
where tells  how  she  was  walking  in  her  garden 
and  a  voice  seemed  to  speak  to  her  heart,  say- 
ing, "  Act  as  though  I  were,  and  thou  shalt 
know  I  am  "  ?  That  experience  is  not  by  any 
means  isolated.  It  has  saved  many  a  man  from 
doubt  and  despondency.  One  example  which  is 
often  quoted  in  these  days,  and  whose  influence 
is  greater  than  it  was  in  his  lifetime,  is  that  of 
Robertson,  of  Brighton.  Some  young  men 
may  be  interested  in  hearing  of  the  crisis  in 
Robertson's  life,  when  his  faith  became  fixed. 
Like  many  other  men,  there  came  a  time  when 
he  doubted  nearly  everything  he  had  been  taught 
in  the  name  of  religion.  In  1846,  during  a 
visit  to  Germany,  he  writes  home  to  a  friend 
in  some  such  terms  as  the  following :  "  Of 
one  thing  I  am  certain,  and  it  cannot  be  taken 
away  from  me.  I  have  got  as  far  as  this — 
moral  goodness  and  moral  beauty  are  realities 
lying  at  the  root  of  and  beneath  all  forms  of 
religious  expression.  They  are  no  dream,  and 
they  are  no  mere  utilitarian  conventions.  That 
suspicion  was  an  agony  to  me  once,  but  it  is 
passing  away  now.  Again  and  again  I  de- 
spaired of  the  reality  of  goodness,  but  in  all 
that  struggle  I  am  thankful  to  say  the  bewilder- 
ment never  told  upon  my  conduct.     In  the 


16     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

thickest  darkness  I  tried  to  keep  my  eyes  on 

nobleness  and  goodness." 

Arthur  Hallam,  Tennyson's  and  Gladstone's 
friend  at  Oxford,  passed  through  a  similar 
spiritual  crisis  and  solved  it  in  the  same  fashion 
by  moral  faithfulness.  You  know  the  words  in 
that  monumental  poem,  "  In  Memoriam/'  in 
which  Tennyson  describes  his  way  out : 

•'  He  fought  his  doubts  and  gather'd  strength, 
He  would  not  make  his  judgment  blind, 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  the  mind 
And  laid  them:  thus  he  came  at  length 

••  To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own; 

And  power  was  with  him  in  the  night, 
Which  makes  the  darkness  and  the  light, 
And  dwells  not  in  the  light  alone." 

Men  and  brethren,  every  one  of  you  bows 
before  a  moral  ideal  written  in  his  heart.  You 
may  prove  unfaithful  to  it,  but  if  you  faithfully 
obey  it,  it  will  lead  you  into  light.  Whoever  or 
whatever  wrought  that  ideal  within  you  is 
your  God,  and  your  God  makes  His  demands 
upon  you  not  simply  sometimes  and  here  and 
there,  but  all  the  time,  and  everywhere.  The 
greatest  need,  I  repeat,  of  the  present  day  is 
the  need  of  a  strenuous  form  of  morality.  Make 
men  who  are  not  afraid  of  rendering  homage  to 
conscience,  and  you  will  make  that  type  of  char- 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     17 

acter  which  Christ  Himself  dehghts  to  honour. 
For  a  revival  is  coming.  Some  people  say,  and 
I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  think,  that  it  has 
already  come.  If  it  is  coming,  it  will  be  a  re- 
vival of  homage  to  conscience.  The  highest 
will  take  care  of  itself.  Christ  is  the  highest, 
and  men  are  bound  to  bow  down  before  Him, 
"  that  in  all  things  He  might  have  the  pre- 
eminence." 

But  to  go  to  my  second  point,  there  is  no 
goodness  worth  having  which  is  not  born  in 
conflict.  The  poet  I  have  just  quoted  says  man 
is  as 

"...  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 
And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears. 
And  dipt  in  baths  of  hissing  tears, 
And  batter'd  with  the  shocks  of  doom 
To  shape  and  use." 

Make  a  distinction  between  the  morally  beau- 
tiful and  the  morally  sublime.  I  trust  you  have 
all  read  Edmund  Burke's  essay  on  the  "  Sub- 
lime and  Beautiful."  You  will  remember  that 
he  declares  one  ingredient  of  the  sublime  to  be 
a  feeling  akin  to  fear,  fear  in  the  presence  of 
an  unknown,  dread  of  an  experience  that  may 
come.  Now,  young  men,  the  morally  beautiful 
may  contain  nothing  at  all  of  that  particular 
ingredient.    The  morally  sublime  goes  to  the 


18     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

making  of  character,  and  in  the  long  run  it  can- 
not be  opposed  to  the  morally  beautiful.  Now 
in  this  congregation  there  may  be  a  little  child 
not  understanding  three  words  of  what  I  am 
saying.  You  cannot  but  feel  that  that  little 
child  is  perhaps  in  some  ways  superior  to  your- 
self, morally  beautiful.  There  is  nothing  more 
winsome  than  the  innocence  of  childhood.  Is 
childhood  ideal?  No,  but  childlikeness  is. 
You  will  go  from  the  morally  beautiful 
through  the  morally  sublime  back  to  the  child 
spirit.  Begin  with  childlikeness,  if  you  would 
come  to  the  character  of  Christ.  If  you  go 
through  the  morally  sublime,  you  must  be  pre- 
pared to  meet  Apollyon  in  the  Valley  of  Hu- 
miliation and  the  demons  in  the  darkness  of 
the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death.  Simplic- 
ity, naturalness,  transparency  of  character,  ab- 
sence of  arrogance,  are  characteristic  of  the 
child.  It  is  remarkable,  but  splendid,  to  think 
that  within  these  are  the  very  things  which  the 
world  is  coming  to  demand  from  manhood. 
Test  it  yourself.  If  in  place  of  simplicity  we 
read  duplicity,  if  in  place  of  naturalness  we 
read  hypocrisy,  if  in  place  of  transparency  of 
character  we  read  the  modern  pose  which  will 
give  the  impression  that  a  man  is  better  than 
he  really  is,  if  in  place  of  the  absence  of  arro- 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     19 

gance  we  notice  the  presence  of  the  domineer- 
ing pretence  so  characteristic  of  one  form  of 
character  which  is  doing  so  much  evil  to-day, 
surely  we  are  obeying  our  highest  instincts 
when  we  say,  "  These  things  should  make 
way  for  purity  of  heart,  for  meekness  of  dis- 
position, for  all  that  is  characteristic  of  the 
child." 

Examine  your  own  virtue  and  see  if  you 
have  obtained  these  qualities.  That  is  not 
virtue  which  is  easily  won.  The  false  accent 
of  religiosity  to-day  says  much  about  humility 
where  humility  is  not,  and  a  man  may  come  to 
that  dangerous  condition  when,  as  has  been 
truly  said,  he  is  proud  of  his  own  humility. 
Doing  merely  what  one  wants  to  is  no  great 
virtue  in  the  sight  of  God.  There  are  some 
people  here  to-night,  it  may  be,  who  not  so 
long  ago  would  rather  have  been  in  the  drink- 
ing saloon.  Why  are  not  you  there  to-night? 
Because  it  has  ceased  to  appeal.  You  do  not 
want  to  go.  Near  you  sits  a  man  who  never 
did  want  to  go,  and  if  the  old  temptation  should 
come  over  you  you  might,  for  a  moment,  be 
disposed  to  think,  and  perhaps  he,  too,  might 
be  moved  to  think  he  is  better  than  you  in  the 
sight  of  God.  But  he  is  not.  You  are  winning 
your  freedom  by  conflict,  and  the  greatest  mon- 


W     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

ument  of  free,  unmerited  Divine  grace  in  this 
place  at  this  moment  is  not  you,  but  the  man 
who  has  never  been  tempted  to  the  far  country 
and  to  feeding  upon  husks.  There  is  an  old 
prayer  which  says,  "Lord,  be  merciful  unto 
the  tempted.  Lord,  be  merciful  unto 
the  fallen.  The  good  have  more  to  praise 
Thee  for  in  that  they  have  never  been  tempted 
and  have  not  fallen." 

We  are  every  day  confronted  with  the  choice 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower,  the  golden 
image  or  the  fiery  furnace.  Sometimes  a 
grand  crisis  comes  in  life.  We  have  to  choose 
between  God  and  Mammon,  conscience  or  a 
momentary  gain.  In  such  crises  we  seem  left 
to  ourselves,  but  we  never  really  are  left  to 
ourselves.  In  the  darkest  hour  there  stands  by 
our  side  that  unknown  Friend.  Most  of  us 
want  God  to  rescue  us  before  the  crisis  comes. 
He  very  seldom  does  that,  but  He  rescues  usion 
the  other  side  of  the  strenuous  activity  by 
which  character  is  beaten  out,  gained,  and 
won. 

I  remember  during  my  voyage  to  South  Af- 
rica, when  we  were  sailing  up  the  east  coast,  we 
came  to  a  port — East  London — of  which  you 
may  have  heard.  To  obtain  entrance  to  the 
harbour  it  was  necessary  for  us,  in  little  groups 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     21 

and  in  flat-bottomed  boats,  to  cross  the  bar. 
Some  shrank  from  the  ordeal.  I  felt  a  shrink- 
ing myself.  As  we  were  tossed  at  the  entrance 
of  the  harbour,  one  felt  one  would  rather  have 
gone  back  and  left  East  London  alone.  But  it 
is  remarkable  that  when  we  passed  over  to  the 
other  side,  though  we  could  not  see  why  it  was 
so,  it  was  like  an  inland  lake.  Here  is  a  figure 
of  our  moral  opportunity.  When  God  calls  us 
to  a  crisis,  God  brings  us  to  a  conflict.  It  is  as 
though  there  was  a  bar  to  cross,  and  on  the 
other  side,  and  only  on  the  other  side,  is  the 
still  water  and  safety.  God  does  not  give  His 
rescues  upon  this  side.  It  is  an  evil  agency  that 
would  keep  a  man  back  from  that  by  which  his 
manhood  is  won.  Here  is  opportunity  in  the 
great  crises  of  life — to  venture  on  for  the 
right,  and  to  leave  the  future  to  God. 

In  Brighton  at  one  time  when  I  was  preach- 
ing somewhat  in  this  strain,  I  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  a  man  who  told  me  a  story,  bear- 
ing a  considerable  amount  of  pathos,  of  his 
own  early  life.  He  said  he  could  remember  the 
time  when  his  father  was  dismissed  from  a  sit- 
uation for  daring  to  tell  the  truth.  The  chil- 
dren could  not  understand  what  the  choice  was 
which  led  him  to  take  that  decision.  They 
could  not  understand  the  merits  of  the  decision. 


22     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

He  could  remember  his  mother  cutting  the  last 
crust  of  the  loaf  and  shedding  tears  as  she  did 
so,  and  when  they  asked  her  why  she  cried  she 
told  them  the  story  of  the  father's  heroism. 
They  did  not  understand,  they  could  not  enter 
into  it.  "  But  now,"  said  my  informant,  "  do 
I  need  to  tell  you  that  my  father's  example  and 
my  father's  character  have  saved  me  in  many  a 
similar  dark  hour?  "  His  heroism  was  won  at 
a  greater  cost  than  that  of  any  of  us,  for  he 
had  to  suffer  by  seeing  his  children  suffer. 

Supposing,  then,  that  there  is  some  man 
listening  to  me  who  is  face  to  face  with  the 
burning  fiery  furnace,  I  would  say  to  him, 
Make  this  humble  man  your  ideal.  Be  not  care- 
ful about  your  answer.  First  thoughts  are 
best  in  cases  like  this.  Play  the  man.  "  Our 
God  is  able  to  deliver  "  you  from  the  burning 
fiery  furnace — but  if  not,  why,  what  if  not? 
Then  do  not  bow  down.  Leave  the  future  to 
Him,  and  if  He  vindicate  not  His  own  He  is 
not  the  God  of  the  heroes  of  the  ages  past ;  and 
yet  we  know  He  must  be  ever  the  same. 

On  yonder  wall  there  is  a  medallion  on 
which  you  cannot  look  too  often — that  of  the 
poor  tinker  of  Bedford,  John  Bunyan.  His 
name  is  a  household  word  in  this  land  of  ours 
to-day  because  he  suffered  for  the  highest.    He 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     23 

went  to  prison  rather  than  yield  his  faith, 
rather  than  give  up  his  practice  of  proclaiming 
the  good  news  of  Jesus  Christ.  You  remember 
his  words,  pathetically  eloquent,  to  his  little 
blind  girl,  who  came  to  him  for  the  evening 
blessing:  "  Poor  child!  "  he  said,  as  he  took 
the  food  from  her  hand  and  gave  her  the  laces 
to  sell  to  make  a  living;  "  poor  child,  how  hard 
it  is  like  to  go  with  thee  in  this  world !  Thou 
must  be  beaten,  must  beg,  must  suffer  cold  and 
want  and  nakedness,  and  yet  I  cannot  endure 
that  even  the  wind  should  blow  upon  thee." 

*'  Our  God  is  able  to  deliver,  but  if  not " 

Even  love  must  be  the  sword  which  pierces 
the  heart. 

Some  of  you  are,  even  to-day  perhaps, 
tempted  to  compromise  with  the  ideal.  Watch 
what  you  are  doing.  You  are  perilling  some- 
thing higher  than  you  know,  driving  from 
you,  it  may  be,  God's  great  opportunity. 

*'  Better  to  stem  with  heart  and  hand 
The  roaring  tide  of  life,  than  lie 
Unmindful  on  its  flowery  strand 
Of  God's  occasions,  drifting  by. 
Better  with  naked  nerve  to  bear 
The  needles  of  this  goading  air, 
Than  in  the  lap  of  sensual  ease  forget 
The  godlike  power  to  do, 
The  godlike  aim  to  know." 


24     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

Faithfulness  is  always  vindicated.  There  is  a 
wondrous  grandeur  in  moral  victory.  The 
Jesuit  said,  in  ''  John  Inglesant,"  that  well- 
known  psychological  study  of  the  progress  of 
a  somewhat  too  self-conscious  soul,  It  matters 
comparatively  little  in  this  world  to  what  cause 
or  party  you  attach  yourself,  so  you  feel  it  to 
be  good,  but  when  you  have  given  yourself  to 
cause  or  party,  be  faithful  and  true.  Yes.  That 
is  what  God  requires — your  very  best.  Never 
left  alone  in  the  conflict !  Though  you  come  to 
the  furnace,  beside  you  walks  a  form  like  unto 
the  Son  of  God.  If  it  were  otherwise,  God's 
world  would  be  wrongly  made.  No  man  who 
has  ever  tested  the  worth  of  righteousness  has 
had  cause  to  regret  his  choice.  We  are  not 
asked  for  loud  profession.  We  are  not  asked 
for  dramatic  debate  or  screaming  witness  to 
what  we  believe  to  be  the  highest.  We  are 
asked  to  live  it.  And  to  live  on  the  lowest  rung 
of  the  ladder  of  truth  faithfully  and  well  is 
bound  by  and  by  to  lead  to  the  top. 

My  brother,  listen  to  the  call  of  inflexible 
good.  Dare  to  trust  it  and  obey.  Your  life  is 
different  from  mine,  different  from  everybody 
else's.  You  have  to  settle  your  own  questions 
in  your  own  corner.  As  you  have  to  die  alone 
so  in  some  respects  you  have  to  live  alone. 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST     25 

Sympathy  may  help  to  brace  you,  but  there  is 
a  grandeur  in  soHtude, — moral  solitude, — and 
great  choices  remain. 

Stand  up  and  look  fate  in  the  face.  God  is 
able  to  deliver  you  from  every  agony,  from 
every  pang  that  accompanies  the  choice  of  the 
highest.  But  if  not — if  not — do  you  hear  it? 
God  is  able  to  deliver  you  from  the  fiery  fur- 
nace to-morrow,  beforehand  you  need  not  go 
to  it.     But  if  not — what,  then,  will  you  do? 


II 

THE  DAY  OF  DECISION 


II 

THE  DAY  OF  DECISION 

Choose  you   this  day   whom  ye  will  serve.— Josh, 
xxiv.  IS, 

THIS  is  a  sentence  often  quoted  as  the 
text  of  an  evangelical  appeal,  and 
perhaps  on  that  very  account  some  of 
those  who  hear  it  may  be  inclined  to  discount 
its  force.  It  is  employed  not  seldom  by  persons 
who  have  perhaps  no  very  vivid  idea  of  its  his- 
toric associations.  Its  force  is  all  the  greater 
when  we  endeavour  to  recall  what  those  asso- 
ciations were. 

Here  is  an  old  warrior,  captain  of  the  hosts 
of  Israel.  His  toils  are  nearly  over.  He  feels 
upon  him  the  chilly  hand  of  death.  He  calls 
around  him  his  mighty  men,  the  elders  of 
Israel,  their  sages,  their  judges,  their  officers, 
their  men  of  war.  This  is  the  way  he  talks  to 
them.  Pointing  with  his  aged  hand  north, 
south,  east,  west,  he  says :  "  Behold  this  fair 
land  of  yours.  I  conquered  it  for  you  with  a 
strong  hand.  You  followed  me  on  many  a 
29 


so     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

stricken  field.  Have  I  ever  failed  you  ?  Have 
I  ever  done  aught  that  was  unworthy  of 
Israel?  Well,  now,  look  back.  See  the  way 
that  you  have  come.  Recognise  the  leading 
hand  of  God.  Your  fathers  served  other  gods, 
and  in  this  new  land  to  which  you  have  come, 
other  gods  are  worshipped,  too.  But  our  God, 
yours  and  mine,  to  Whom  we  prayed  in  the 
wilderness,  and  Who  hath  given  us  the  victory, 
Who  hath  led  us  hitherto,  to  Him  be  all  the 
glory  and  all  homage  due.  Not  with  your 
sword  nor  with  your  bow,  but  by  the  mighty 
hand  of  God,  has  this  new  opportunity  been 
given  to  you.  You  are  the  chosen  people. 
Choose  therefore  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve 
in  days  to  come.'* 

Now  I  am  aware  that  Israel's  view  of  the 
nature  of  the  God  of  Whom  Joshua  spoke  was 
not  quite  ours.  Let  us  look  that  matter  quietly 
in  the  face.  It  was  not  so  lofty.  The  God  of 
Israel  was  a  grim  deity, — as  Joshua  describes 
Him  in  the  context  of  this  chapter,  a  jealous 
God, — although  we  know  better  now,  because 
some  one  bearing  the  very  name  of  Joshua — 
for  Jesus  is  that  name — came  and  told  us 
about  a  Father  who  loves  and  cares.  But  if 
Israel  had  never  witnessed  for  the  God  they 
thought  they  knew,  we  should  never  have  been 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  31 

here  to  worship  the  God  that  Jesus  gave.  I 
want  you  young  men  to  understand  that  before 
we  go  any  further.  It  was  Israel's  faithful 
witness,  or  the  witness  of  Israel's  faithful  few, 
to  a  God  of  righteousness,  however  austere 
their  conception  of  that  God  may  have  been,  a 
God  of  righteousness,  that  has  made  possible 
your  Christian  God  of  love. 

Consider,  then,  how  momentous  was  the 
choice  that  was  made  at  the  instance  of  Joshua 
on  that  historic  day.  For  if  Israel  had  chosen 
the  god  of  the  Amorites  or  the  god  of  any  of 
the  surrounding  people,  the  world  would  have 
gone  wrong.  You  have  small  conception  of  the 
filthiness,  of  the  barbarity  and  the  cruelty  of 
the  worship  of  the  Semitic  peoples  who  were 
all  around  the  little  nation  of  Israel.  As  Lu- 
cretius, the  pagan  poet,  has  well  put  it — 


'Gainst  all  things  good  and  beautiful 
'Tis  oft  religion  doth  the  foulest  treason. 


Israel  saved  us  from  the  degradation  of  the 
religious  ideal.  Its  moral  uniqueness,  the 
spiritual  loftiness  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah, 
have  prepared  the  way  for  the  Christianity  of 
Christ.  So  you  see  what  a  far-reaching  effect 
the  decision  of  Israel  had  in  response  to  the 


32     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

call  of  Joshua,  "  Choose  you  this  day  whom 
ye  will  serve." 

With  these  historic  associations  in  our 
minds,  let  us  regard  the  exhortation  as  ad- 
dressed to  ourselves.  My  purpose  is  to  make 
you  hear  the  words  of  this  old  warrior  as 
though  they  were  spoken  to  London  and  to 
you.  You  cannot  overrate  their  importance, 
and  you  cannot  get  away  from  their  appeal. 
There  are  some  choices  that  must  be  made,  and 
you  may  make  them  by  refusing  to  make  them. 
You  may  choose  the  wrong  by  closing  your 
eyes  to  the  right,  by  postponing  the  day  of  de- 
cision. And  all  I  have  to  do  is  to  try  to  make 
you  see,  as  plainly  as  I  know  how,  the  issues  be- 
fore you  and  the  importance  of  the  decision  I 
urge  you  to  make. 

Have  you  ever  read  John  Foster's  essay  on 
decision  of  character?  Probably  most  of  you 
have  not.  John  Foster  was  read  by  your 
fathers  and  grandfathers,  but  this  generation 
appears  to  be  forgetting  about  him.  If  you 
have  not  read  that  essay,  get  it  out  from  some 
library  and  read  it  forthwith.  In  one  para- 
graph he  urges  the  following  consideration, 
which  I  do  not  quote  to  you,  I  only  cite  it 
from  memory.  In  effect  it  is  this:  There  are 
many   men    to-day    drifting   into    a    destiny. 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  33 

There  are  many  others  talking  about  being 
fated  to  do  this,  foreordained  to  do  that,  their 
destiny  appointed,  and  so  on.  Doth  not  clear 
vision  of  opportunity  and  duty — doth  not  clear 
vision  constitute  destiny?  Do  you  not  hold 
your  to-morrow  in  your  own  hands  ?  You  see 
the  right — choose  it  or  choose  it  not.  Speak  no 
more  about  the  destiny  appointed ;  you  make  or 
unmake  your  own. 

That  prophet  of  God  might  come  along  and 
speak  to  the  young  manhood  of  to-day,  for  just 
as  his  appeal  was  true  when  it  was  to  your 
fathers,  that  teaching  is  true  when  applied  to 
you.  I  do  not  assume  that  you  are  all  prodi- 
gals. Many  an  evangelist  goes  a  little  wrong 
by  talking  in  that  way.  You  are  nothing  of 
the  sort.  Perhaps  the  majority  of  the  young 
fellows  and  young  women  who  listen  to  me  are 
in  the  main  disposed  to  live  as  good  a  life  as 
they  know.  The  trouble  is  that  they  have  never 
traced  out  and  committed  themselves  wholly  to 
the  ideal  of  the  best  life.  They  are  doing  what 
John  Foster  would  call  drifting  into  a  destiny. 
You  are  of  unformed  character.  Many  of  you 
are  easy-going  and  without  purpose  in  life. 
You  are  aimless,  and  yet  you  are  just  entering 
your  promised  land,  and  God  looks  very  kindly 
upon  your  future.    If  I  could  get  inside  your 


34     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHESTl 

heart  and  brain,  and  hear  with  you  and  feel 
with  you  and  understand  what  your  ideals  are, 
I  do  not  think  I  could  have  much  more  S)mi- 
pathy  than  I  have  now.  Is  it  not  true  that  you 
think  of  Hfe  as  golden,  full  of  promise?  Per- 
haps you  have  found  yourself  in  a  hard  place, 
your  living  is  not  easy  to  get,  the  immediate 
future  does  not  look  rosy,  but  you  can  sleep  at 
night  because  you  are  young  and  full  of  hope. 
There  will  be  a  better  day  by  and  by,  so  you 
assure  yourself,  or,  without  assuring  yourself, 
feel  it  must  be  so. 

You  are  not  wrong.  That  instinct  is  God's 
gift  to  you,  and  what  is  more,  it  is  yours  to  use 
it  right,  and  make  that  instinct  to  become 
achievement.  I  went  to-day  to  see  some  one 
who,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  happened  to 
say — and  he  is  a  man  with  full  and  rich  experi- 
ence of  life — "  I  wish  you  preachers  would 
make  a  little  plainer  to  the  young  of  your  con- 
gregation the  importance  of  being  clear  on  the 
threshold  of  manhood  and  womanhood  about 
the  things  that  matter  most."  "  But,"  he  went 
on  to  say,  "  you  pulpit  teachers  teach  such  dif- 
ferent things.  You  contradict  one  another. 
Men  are  not  quite  sure  about  your  meaning." 
Now,  I  do  not  agree  with  my  friend,  and  I 
want  you  to  see  under  this  statement  the  same 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  35 

fallacy  I  made  him  see  under  it.  Preachers  do 
not  speak  different  things  about  the  things  that 
matter  most.  No  teacher  sent  from  God  really 
misses  the  mark,  and  what  is  more  the  people 
to  whom  he  is  sent  know  perfectly  well  when 
he  hits  the  mark,  and  every  sermon  preached 
in  this  metropolis,  every  one, — Roman  Catholic, 
Anglican,  Jew,  and  Christian, — will  contain 
something  that  comes  right  from  the  mind  and 
heart  of  God,  and  is  intended  for  the  mind  and 
heart  of  man.  Different  things  we  do  not  say, 
different  things  about  the  great  truths  concern- 
ing high  living,  right  thinking,  right  doing. 
Beloved,  my  own  life,  like  yours,  is  built  upon 
two  or  three  truths,  and  any  man  who  has  two 
or  three  main  truths  in  his  life,  and  for  which 
he  would  give  his  life  if  necessary,  is  pretty 
safe  to  be  taught  of  God  concerning  the  things 
that  lie  beyond.  We  carry  within  us  the  God- 
given  faculty  for  recognising  the  truth  that 
helps  us  upward,  and  though  my  aspect  of 
truth  may  not  be  precisely  yours,  we  start 
from  the  same  base,  and  we  take  our  stand 
upon  the  same  eternal  facts  which,  worked  out 
in  every-day  experience,  ever  ring  true.  Ex- 
ternals matter  little;  modes  of  statement  may 
differ,  but  truth  is  one  as  God  is  one. 

Now  here  are  three  principles  on  which  I 


36     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

am  building  my  life.  The  first  is  this:  The 
universe  is  organised  for  righteousness. 
Granted  it  does  not  look  like  it,  granted  that 
men  lose  sight  of  it  sometimes  (they  would 
not  cheat  and  lie  and  thieve  if  they  did  not)  ; 
but  it  is  so,  and  it  is  not  only  conventional  and 
orthodox  preachers  who  think  so.  There  are 
people  who  teach  with  the  pen  as  well  as  the 
tongue,  and  all  men  who  have  stood  upon  the 
everlasting  hills  and  caught  the  glint  of  God's 
golden  morning  have  urged  that  truth  upon 
their  fellows  in  the  valley: 

"  Because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence." 

The  second  is  this :  Life  does  not  end  at  the 

grave. 

•'  Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest. 

And  the  grave  is  not  our  goal; 
Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  returnest, 
Was  not  spoken  of  the  soul." 

I  have  never  outgrown  that  simple  hymn  of  my 
youth. 

Here  is  the  third:  The  highest  is  the  true, 
and  the  highest  I  know  is  Jesus. 

I  can  Imagine  somebody  saying,  "  We  might 
with  a  little  difficulty  agree  to  your  first  prop- 
osition, but  the  other  two — are  not  you  too 
dogmatic?     Are  you  sure  that  life  does  not 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  S7 

end  at  the  tomb?  Are  you  sure  that  the  high- 
est is  the  true  ?  How  do  you  know  ?  "  My 
answer  is,  How  do  you  know  anything?  The 
most  elementary  fact  with  which  you  are  deal- 
ing on  the  Stock  Exchange  to-morrow  and  in 
the  merchant's  office  on  Cheapside  begins  in  a 
paradox  and  ends  in  one.  The  curious  part  of 
it  is  that  men  hesitate  so  much  to  build  their 
life  upon  a  truth  which  is  no  more  a  paradox 
than  the  lower  truth  in  which  they  are  living 
their  life  every  day. 

"  How  do  you  know  that  Jesus  is  the  high- 
est ?  "  Show  me  a  higher,  and  I  will  dethrone 
Him.  I  am  prepared  to  worship  the  Christ 
that  stands  beyond  Jesus  if  you  can  make  me 
see  Him,  but  I  have  never  seen  Him  and  you 
never  will.  Oh,  the  folly  of  standing  hesitat- 
ing, non-committal,  half-contemptuous  in  the 
presence  of  the  King  of  kings,  and  Lord  of 
lords.  If  Christ  is  not  Master  of  the  universe 
and  Lord  of  life  and  Lord  of  death,  who  is? 
I  only  know  one  who  is  worthy,  and  that  is 
the  Lamb  that  was  slain. 

The  first  sermon  I  ever  heard  Dr.  Parker 
preach  contained  a  figure  which  I  pass  on  to 
you,  pungently  powerful  in  this  regard. 
"  How  men  do  trifle  with  truth,"  he  said, 
"  standing  on  the  outside  of  it,   when  they 


38     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

might  be  living  on  the  inside."  "  As  I  came 
down  to  the  service  this  morning  I  might  have 
seen,"  he  continued,  *'  a  man  standing  outside 
the  station,  spelhng  the  name  of  the  railway, 
and  parsing  every  word,  The — Metropolitan — 
Railway — T — H — E — and  so  on.  By  the 
time  he  got  to  the  end  of  the  title  I  had  my 
third-class  ticket,  and  was  five  miles  down  the 
hne." 

I  see  you  smiling.  Will  you  change  your 
smile  into  sacred  and  solemn  assent?  That 
figure  is  as  a  voice  from  the  tomb.  Verily,  we 
do  trifle  with  the  truth,  and  stand  hesitating, 
non-committal,  selfishly  aloof  from  the  out- 
side, when  we  ought  to  be  living  in  grand  and 
noble  daring  on  the  inside.  ''  Choose  you  this 
day  whom  ye  will  serve."  The  Lord  who  has 
kept  me  hitherto  will  keep  me  to  the  end.  I 
know  my  faith  in  Him  is  worth  my  while  be- 
cause it  works.  If  I  had  to-morrow  to  begin 
again  I  would  begin  again  with  Christ.  "  I 
know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth,"  liveth  to  vin- 
dicate everything  that  is  noble,  liveth  as  the 
Master  behind  all  mystery,  the  God  Who  un- 
derstands the  human  heart,  in  that  He  Himself 
hath  lived  the  human  life.  Jesus  is  the  expla- 
nation of  all  that  baffles,  the  Name  in  which  to 
live,  the  end  to  which  we  go. 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  39 

Oh,  yes,  somebody  will  say,  this  experience 
will  work  for  a  corner  of  life.  I  could  under- 
stand your  religious  man  talking-  in  this  style, 
but  you  see  we  have  not  time,  we  are  so  busy 
getting  a  footing  in  the  world.  Now  make  no 
mistake  about  the  matter.  The  principle  is  for 
the  whole  of  life.  There  is  no  departmentalis- 
ing,  life  is  not  lived  in  compartments.  Re- 
ligion is  not  for  Sunday,  or,  if  so,  less  for  that 
day  than  for  any  other  day.  If  you  are  a  man 
of  business,  take  your  religion  into  your  busi- 
ness. Do  more  than  that,  take  care  that  your 
business  is  the  expression  of  your  religion. 

Moreover,  the  decision  to  stand  for  and  with 
God  will  affect  every  corner  of  your  thinking, 
every  iota  of  your  action.  You  cannot  give 
Christ  one  detail  of  your  life,  and  retain  all 
the  rest.  He  is  entitled  to  the  whole,  and  the 
whole  He  will  have.  Jesus  is  worth  your  best. 
He  has  been  tried  for  nineteen  hundred  years, 
and  is  not  found  wanting.  Do  not  make  the 
mistake  of  finding  out  too  late  that  He  was 
worth  your  choosing,  and  that  you  have  wasted 
your  days.  "  Choose  you  this  day  whom  ye 
will  serve."  Let  the  result  of  your  decision  be 
this^ — "  We  will  serve  the  Lord." 

I  remember  taking  a  holiday  in  Devonshire 
some  years  ago,  and  coming  to  a  spot  near 


40     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

Westward  Ho !  where  two  roads  branched  off 
a  picturesque  Devonshire  lane.  The  one 
seemed  precipitous  and  less  inviting  than  the 
other.  The  latter  led  downward  for  a  time, 
but,  as  we  thought,  led  more  directly  to  the 
place  where  we  wanted  to  go.  Said  our  guide, 
who  left  us  at  the  top  of  the  pass,  "  Choose 
the  higher  road,  it  is  the  surer."  We  stood  de- 
bating with  each  other,  when  we  came  to  the 
parting  of  the  ways,  which  way  really  was  the 
better.  Said  some,  "  The  guide  never  told  us 
the  higher  path ;  he  could  not,  it  was  nonsense. 
Don't  you  see  for  yourself  this  road  which 
leads  down  must  cut  off  the  whole  of  the  un- 
welcome hill  ?  Just  go  that  way,  we  shall  save 
no  end  of  time,  and  spare  ourselves  no  end  of 
weariness."  Well,  we  took  the  lower  way. 
Down  and  down  we  went,  splashing  through 
mud,  regretting  at  every  step  that  we  had  not 
taken  the  higher  road,  and  by  and  by  we  came 
out  upon  the  way  that  we  must  ascend  to  get 
back  to  the  road  that  we  should  have  taken  at 
first.  We  saw  we  had  wasted  our  time,  that 
the  weariness  was  to  be  incurred  on  the  lower 
road  and  not  on  the  higher,  and  we  will  take 
care,  if  ever  any  friends  of  ours  have  to  walk 
that  road  again,  they  shall  not  make  the  mis- 
take of  choosing  the  one  that  we  chose.     The 


THE  DAY  OF  DECISION  41 

lower  road  was  the  longer,  it  was  the  harder, 
it  was  the  steeper,  it  was  wearisome,  it  was 
disappointing.  The  higher  road  was  the 
shorter,  it  was  the  grander,  it  was  the  sweeter. 

In  life  we  often  choose  the  lower  road — it 
seems  so  easy.  By  compromising  with  the 
ideal,  we  seem  as  if  we  can  come  out  to  what 
we  want  so  much  more  safely.  It  is  never  safe 
to  compromise.  It  is  never  worthy  to  take  the 
lower  road.  What  may  hang  upon  this  mo- 
ment I  do  not  know.  If  the  preacher  could  be 
silenced,  and  every  life  of  tragic  failure  in  this 
Church  could  rise  up  and  testify,  there  would  be 
no  doubt  as  to  the  choice  that  would  be  made 
by  those  who  are  hesitating.  If  every  saint  of 
God,  every  pure-minded  man  or  woman  who 
had  lived  a  life  with  Christ  could  rise  and  tell 
what  the  Lord  has  meant  to  them,  there  would 
not  be  much  room  for  hesitation  left  in  the 
breast  of  the  audience.  It  is  only  one  who  can 
speak,  and  I  speak  for  the  Master,  and  just  re- 
peat the  old  warrior's  words,  "  Choose  you  this 
day  whom  ye  will  serve."  For  if  you  knew 
what  is  at  stake,  you  would  never  stand  for  a 
moment  halting  between  two  opinions.  "If 
the  Lord  be  God,  follow  Him." 

It  is  so  possible  to  go  wrong  by  choosing  the 
easy,  by  choosing  the  lower,  or  refusing  to 


42     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

choose  at  all.  Let  no  man  hesitate  for  a  mo- 
ment in  the  presence  of  the  ideal  of  the  Christ, 
Who  is  the  highest  you  have  ever  seen.  Take 
that  road,  cost  what  it  may.  Trust  the  Lord, 
however  dark  the  way,  for  the  Christ  in  Whom 
Christians  believe  has  never  failed  His  own 
and  never  will.  Let  that  Christ  be  your  Leader 
and  your  Captain  and  your  Guide. 

To  close  with  the  words  with  which  I  began, 
to  every  young  brother  however  badly  and  un- 
convincingly  and  feebly  I  have  put  the  truth, 
forget  everything  except  the  One  before  Whom 
you  stand.  Entering  upon  your  promised  land, 
make  the  right  choice  in  your  day  of  decision, 
*'  Choose  you  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve,'* 
and  "  Goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow  you  all 
the  days  of  your  life." 


Ill 

SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD 


Ill 

SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD 

And  he  said  unto  me.  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy 
feet,  and  I  will  speak  unto  thee. — Ezek,  it.  j. 

EZEKIEL'S  vision  was  probably  subjec- 
tive. But  such  experiences  have  come 
to  many  of  the  good  and  the  great 
among  God's  august  and  honoured  servants  in 
the  world,  and  there  is  some  similarity  between 
them,  in  that  the  best  and  wisest  of  mankind, 
when  once  they  have  realised  with  intensity  the 
presence  of  God,  the  ineffable,  unapproachable 
holiness,  have  felt  themselves  shamed  and  hu- 
miliated. It  is  only  those  who  are  sunk  in  evil 
who  can  speak  lightly  and  easily  about  the 
purity  of  the  Holy  One.  Ezekiel  was  broken 
down,  shamed,  humiliated,  as  he  saw  the 
holiness  of  the  Lord  as  it  came  to  him  in  vision, 
and  the  sinfulness  which  he  exhibited  in  con- 
trast to  it.  As  he  lay  prostrate  before  the  Su- 
pernal Being,  the  voice  that  spake  within  him 
said,  "  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I 
will  speak  unto  thee." 
45 


46     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

The  sinner's  first  impulse  is  to  prostrate  him- 
self. Repentance  always  begins  within — ''  God 
be  merciful  to  me,  a  sinner  " — but  it  should 
not  end  there.  From  the  Cross  we  go  on- 
wards and  rise  upward,  and  the  first  effect  of  a 
radical  change  of  heart  and  life  is  that  man- 
hood begins  to  show  itself.  Ezekiel  is  not  the 
only  one  who  has  seen  such  a  vision,  and 
whose  whole  life  has  been  changed  in  conse- 
quence. Like  his  experience  is  that  of  Isaiah : 
"  Woe  is  me,  for  I  am  undone :  for  mine  eyes 
have  seen  the  King,  the  Lord  of  hosts."  Like 
St.  Paul,  erstwhile  persecutor,  ruthless  and  ar- 
rogant, but  now — "  Who  art  thou,  Lord  ?  " 
"  I  am  Jesus,  whom  thou  persecutest."  How 
those  words  were  burned  into  the  memory  of 
St.  Paul  we  see  from  his  tender  pastoral  letters 
written  afterwards  to  those  whom  he  would 
persuade  from  the  wrath  to  come  and  to  the 
love  of  the  Christ.  In  Christian  history,  in  not 
a  few  instances,  such  a  spiritual  crisis  has  been 
the  antecedent  of  a  marvellous  life-work.  One 
could  name  not  simply  one,  but  many  of  the 
heroes  of  God  who  have  begun  in  humiliation 
and  ended  in  power.  Self-abasement  is  often 
the  way  to  manhood.  God  speaks  to  the  peni- 
tent the  word  of  encouragement  and  strength; 
the  new  spirit  is  breathed  into  him  who  is  low 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  47 

before  the  Lord.     "  Son  of  man,  stand  upon 
thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  unto  thee." 

We  have  here  a  spiritual  message  for  the 
present  day,  especially  for  the  younger  genera- 
tion. Spiritual  manhood  is  the  thing  we  most 
want  to  see,  and  the  thing  we  most  require  in 
this  England  of  ours.  I  am  impressed  by  many 
things  in  the  life  of  my  younger  brethren  in 
London  which  no  thoughtful  observer  can  af- 
ford to  pass  by.  One  of  them  is  the  compara- 
tive absence  of  what  I  may  call  the  serious  view 
of  life ;  or  we  may  phrase  it  otherwise,  thus : 
Is  it  not  that  the  young  men  of  to-day,  speaking 
broadly,  fail  to  take  either  themselves  or  their 
destiny  or  life  as  a  whole  seriously?  There  is 
a  danger  of  an  opposite  kind,  that  we  take 
ourselves  too  seriously.  Morbid  introspection 
is  bad  for  any  character.  I  do  not  ask  any 
young  man  to  think  of  himself  and  to  study 
himself  until  he  has  fashioned  in  himself  some- 
what of  the  ideal  character  which  in  his  best 
moments  he  can  see.  In  making  such  a  char- 
acter it  were  better  to  look  away  from  yourself. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  so  few  who  are 
prepared  to  take  themselves  with  sufficient 
seriousness  to  begin  the  process  at  all.  In  the 
metropolis  are  men  of  ambition  and  no  am- 
bition; those  who  are  unscrupulous  as  to  their 


48     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

methods  of  getting  a  living  and  winning  a  place 
in  life,  without  any  spiritual  touch  in  their 
character,  without  any  spiritual  aspiration 
which  can  be  detected  by  another,  and  those 
whose  flabby  character — worse,  perhaps,  than 
those  who  are  unscrupulous  concerning  their 
methods  of  carving  a  road  in  life — never 
achieves  anything  at  all.  Such  men  are  not 
only  robbing  God,  but  robbing  themselves. 
"  He  that  sinneth  against  Me  wrongeth  his 
own  soul.'' 

If  I  ask  you,  "What  are  you  living  for?" 
how  many  of  you  would  be  ready  with  an  answer 
of  which  you  need  not  be  ashamed?  We  sel- 
dom pause  to  take  stock  of  ourselves  as  we 
should,  and  without  danger  of  morbidness  that 
should  often  be  done.  How  much  have  you 
counted  for?  Is  the  world  better  because  you 
are  in  it?  Do  you  ever  think  concerning  your 
responsibility?  Have  you  made  any  prepara- 
tion for  the  larger  life  of  which  this  is  only 
the  portal  ?  Well  is  it  if  you  are  ready  with  the 
answer :  "  My  ideal  is  a  noble  one ;  let  God 
once  speak  to  me,  and  I  will  obey."  But  that  is 
not,  as  a  rule,  the  ideal  of  the  manhood  of  our 
time ;  we  fall  short  in  this  particular,  that  God 
is  usually  left  out  of  account  when  we  are  tak- 
ing stock  of  destiny.    It  was  not  always  so  in 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  49 

the  history  of  the  world,  and  particularly  of 
our  country.  There  have  been  great  and  grand 
men — God  send  them  again ! — who  have  helped 
to  shape  our  history  and  made  us  the  liberty- 
loving  nation  that  we  are,  because  they  were 
ready  with  an  answer  when  the  time  of  ques- 
tioning came.  Cromwell  wrestled  with  God 
day  and  night  in  a  time  of  spiritual  crisis,  until 
he  came  clear  out  upon  the  side  of  deep  moral 
conviction.  God  humbled  him,  and  then  raised 
him,  and  in  answer  to  the  question  "  What  are 
you  living  for?"  that  man,  amongst  others  in 
that  stirring  time,  could  have  answered,  "  The 
will  and  the  purpose  of  the  most  holy  God." 

Around  the  walls  of  the  City  Temple  are 
the  names  of  worthies  of  a  past  day,  and  we 
have  added  that  of  "  Joseph  Parker."  Those 
who  knew  him  best  and  longest  will  admit, 
whatever  may  be  said  concerning  his  peculi- 
arities or  eccentricities,  now  that  he  is  gone, 
and  we  can  take  a  true  perspective  of  his  life, 
that  it  was  strenuously  lived.  Had  it  been 
lived  for  its  own  sake  alone,  its  record  would 
have  been  other  than  it  was.  To  the  very  end 
that  servant  of  God  wore  his  harness.  Yet  I 
have  heard  him  say  that  in  the  earlier  part  of 
his  Christian  life  he  sometimes  felt  he  was  un- 
worthy to  serve  the  God  Who  had  given  him  the 


50     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

commission.  To  think  that  he  was  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Holy  One  abased  and  humiliated 
him  as  it  did  Ezekiel,  but,  in  response  to  the 
heavenly  vision,  when  he  had  obeyed  the  call 
and  taken  up  his  life-work,  what  a  man  his 
faith  made  him! 

The  old  Puritanism  had  a  message  to  its 
age.  It  has  been  the  fashion  in  some  quarters 
to  insult  and  deride  Puritanism,  but  it  made 
the  most  massive,  morally  strongest  type  of 
character  the  world  has  ever  known.  It  was 
grim,  unlovely  in  some  of  its  aspects,  rugged, 
stem,  sometimes  merciless.  Because  their 
power  of  moral  indigna-tion  was  so  great,  the 
Ironsides  could  be  ruthless  on  the  battlefield. 
Perhaps  our  spiritual  forefathers  had  not  a 
very  great  sense  of  humour.  Sometimes  I 
think  we  have  too  much.  But  such  men  as 
these  made  the  religious  life  of  England  a  dif- 
ferent thing  from  what,  in  some  of  our  moods, 
we  are  tempted  to  think  it  has  become.  There 
was  a  grandeur  and  massiveness  of  character 
about  these  old  Puritans,  formed  by  the  convic- 
tion that  they  were  servants  of  God,  chosen, 
called,  and  sent.  In  every  case  the  experience 
of  the  Puritan  seems  to  have  begun  in  weak- 
ness toward  God,  and  ended  in  strength  toward 
man.    "  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  51 

I  will  speak  unto  thee,"  would  have  been  the 
message  of  Baxter,  Howe,  Bunyan,  Knox. 
The  last  name  reminds  me  of  what  the  Regent 
Morton  said  of  the  great  Scottish  reformer  as 
he  lay  in  death :  "  There  lies  one  who  never 
feared  the  face  of  man  " — no,  so  much  feared 
he  the  face  of  God.  But  yesterday  there 
was  one  who  seemed  to  echo  the  same  tone. 
Chalmers,  of  New  Guinea,  went  out  to  his 
work,  to  possible  failure  and  actual  martyr- 
dom— went  forth  with  the  same  feeling  in  his 
heart,  and  almost  the  same  words  upon  his  lips. 
God  made  him  the  man  he  was  by  humbling 
him  to  the  dust  at  the  beginning  of  his  spiritual 
career.  Chalmers  knew  not  only  how  to  live, 
but  how  to  die;  he  took  life  seriously,  not  for 
himself,  but  for  God.  He  might  have  heard 
the  ring  of  the  commission  to  Ezekiel,  ''  Son  of 
man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  unto 
thee." 

Young  men,  do  you  not  feel,  as  you  stand 
face  to  face  with  a  spiritual  fact  of  this  kind, 
that,  however  old,  it  has  a  present-day  signifi- 
cance, and  an  individual  one,  too  ?  If  we  have 
failed  in  having  a  high  purpose  in  life,  a  noble 
aim,  an  ideal  of  which  we  need  not  be  ashamed, 
shall  we  not  begin  where  those  great  ones  of 
old  begun — by  entering  into  relationship  with 


52     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

God,  heart  to  heart,  soul  to  soul,  humbling  our- 
selves in  the  dust  before  the  Most  High,  that 
His  holy  hand  may  lift  us  up?  There  is  no 
spiritual  manhood  worthy  of  the  name  apart 
from  the  inspiration  of  God.  Spiritual  man- 
hood is  Christ-informed  character,  and  the 
Christ-informed  conscience  is  the  guide  of  life. 
So  many  are  ashamed  of  being  called  Chris- 
tians, afraid  of  taking  a  stand,  the  non-com- 
mittal attitude  is  the  favourite  one.  There  is 
some  penalty  for  such  spiritual  cowardice,  and 
perhaps  it  may  come  home  to  you  before  this 
life  is  done.  What  you  call  manhood  is  often 
a  base  and  false  ideal.  Yet  what  matters  it 
what  our  fellows  say?  What  matters  it  how 
we  cheat  ourselves  as  to  the  meaning  of  suc- 
cess and  the  worth  of  the  goal  at  which  we 
spend  our  time  in  aiming?  If  God  be  absent 
from  a  life,  that  life  is  barren  and  poor.  God- 
saturated  men  are  wanted  in  the  present  day 
as  much  as  ever  they  were  in  the  history  of  our 
land. 

It  is  not  only  the  lack  of  seriousness  that  one 
sees  in  young  men  to-day ;  there  is  what  I  may 
call  a  new  and  dangerous  hedonism  abroad. 
One  of  the  most  insidious  temptations  of  the 
hour,  sapping  the  very  foundations  of  man- 
hood, is  the  craving  for  pleasure.    The  rein  is 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  53 

given  to  passion.  By  hedonism  I  mean  living 
for  gratification  and  apologising  for  what  are 
by  courtesy  called  the  weaknesses  of  human 
nature.  How  often  we  hear  such  philosophy  as, 
"  It  is  to  be  expected  that  young  men  will  sow 
their  wild  oats.  There  is  a  period  for  that,  and 
we  cannot  be  too  hard  upon  human  nature.  If 
a  man  does  not  break  out  in  one  place,  he  will 
in  another.  If  he  does  not  live  for  the  flesh,  as 
some  of  the  best-hearted  fellows  are  doing  to- 
day, why,  then,  you  must  expect  a  withered, 
dried-up,  cynical  schemer  who  in  some  other 
way  will  take  his  toll  of  life."  It  is  a  lie !  The 
ideal  of  manhood  suggested  by  such  a  philoso-' 
phy  as  that  is  a  false  one.  There  is  no  need  for 
any  man  to  live  the  life  of  the  beast.  If  you 
don't  control  your  senses,  your  senses  will  con- 
trol you.  It  is  perfectly  certain  that  the  man 
who  is  content  to  gratify  that  which  links  him 
to  the  lower  creation  instead  of  to  the  higher, 
is  laying  up  for  himself  a  harvest  of  remorse. 
God  forbid  that  any  man,  however  unwilling  to 
label  himself  with  the  name  of  Christian,  or 
any  other,  should  be  led  away  in  the  belief  that 
it  is  right  to  live  for  that  which  is  bestial,  and 
that,  with  the  hot  blood  pouring  through  his 
veins,  he  cannot  be  master  of  his  own  thoughts, 
let  alone  his  deeds.     Character  is  being  built 


54     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

every  hour,  not  only  by  what  you  do,  but  by 
what  you  think.  Live  for  the  highest,  not  the 
lowest.  "  Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet, 
and  hear  the  speech  of  God." 

Do  not  speak  lightly  concerning  those  sacred 
things  which  God  has  entrusted  to  our  keeping, 
particularly  womanhood.  Not  many  hours 
since  I  heard  a  slighting,  insulting,  unworthy 
remark  made  by  a  young  man  concerning  the 
sex  to  which  his  mother  belongs.  Never  allow 
such  a  word  to  pass  unrebuked  in  your  pres- 
ence. Never  think  that  it  matters  little,  or 
that  it  is  becoming  and  proper  to  the  sex  of 
which  you  are  a  member.  That  is  not  man- 
hood; it  is  moral  negation.  The  ideals  which 
are  made  for  you  by  the  voice  of  the  beast  are 
not  those  which  in  your  best  and  most  solemn 
moments  you  know  you  ought  to  conform  to. 
God  has  not  left  you  without  a  witness,  and 
you  need  no  preacher  to  tell  you  this.  Stand 
upon  your  feet;  be  master  of  the  body.  He 
that  soweth  to  his  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap 
corruption;  he  that  soweth  to  the  spirit  shall 
of  the  spirit  reap  eternal  life. 

There  is  a  duty  of  self-formation.  You  are 
making  yourself  every  day  and  every  hour  in 
the  unseen.  Did  you  ever  think  of  that? 
Psychologists  tell  us  that  we  know  very  little 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  55 

about  our  own  being;  consciousness  is  but  a 
tiny  corner  of  that  vast  entity  which  is  summed 
up  in  the  personahty  of  any  one  man.  But 
the  unconscious  part  of  us  is  that  in  which  char- 
acter resides;  we  are  continually  putting  into 
the  unseen  being  lying  below  our  conscious 
self,  yet  our  very  own  soul,  and  by  and  by, 
after  the  great  change  that  we  call  death,  when 
we  live  more  than  ever,  what  we  are  will  stand 
out  in  the  lurid  light  of  the  eternal  world  of 
truth. 

"  The  tissues  of  the  life  to  be 

We  weave  with  colours  all  our  own, 
And  in  the  field  of  destiny 
We  reap  as  we  have  sown." 

Make  no  mistake  as  to  the  result  of  our 
action  and  the  ideals  for  which  we  live. 
We  are  controlled  by  them ;  if  we  do  not  aspire 
to  the  higher,  we  are  mastered  by  the  lower. 
There  is  a  judgment  which  ever  proceeds,  and 
so  certainly  as  the  Christ  is  neglected,  ignored, 
so  certainly  are  we  thrusting  Him  from  us  in 
the  unseen,  and  shall  want  Him  when  we  need 
Him  most.  Let  no  man  ever  make  light  of  the 
judgment.  There  must  be  a  judgment.  We 
know  sometimes,  by  the  moral  indignation  that 
wells  up  in  ourselves  at  sight  of  a  deed  of 
wrong,  what  would  be  the  just  condemnation 


56     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

passed  upon  us  for  opportunities  let  slip  and 
mismanaged.  There  is  a  character  that  the 
world  cannot  see  in  every  one  of  you,  perhaps 
unknown  to  yourself.  It  is  seen  now  in  the  un- 
seen, and  by  and  by  you  shall  see  it  as  it  is, 
when  the  secrets  of  all  hearts  are  revealed.  Per- 
haps some  good  things  may  come  to  light  then, 
as  well  as  bad  ones.  John  Wesley  used  to  say 
that  he  expected  three  surprises  in  heaven — 
(i)to  see  some  men  there  that  he  never  ex- 
pected to  see;  (2)  not  to  see  some  whom  he 
did  expect  to  see;  (3)  greatest  wonder  of  all, 
to  find  that  he  was  there  himself.  John  Wes- 
ley's eschatology  would  not  be  mine,  but  his 
vivid  sense  of  judgment  to  come  is  mine.  We 
ought  never  to  trifle  with  the  facts  of  life,  and 
we  cannot  speak  too  solemnly  and  seriously 
upon  that  which  awaits  us  when  the  veil  of 
time  and  sense  is  no  more;  when  we  see  our- 
selves as  we  are;  when  the  vision  is  not  only 
open  to  our  minds,  but  the  influence  thereof  to 
our  hearts.  But  God  can  see  even  now  what 
has  been  hidden  beneath  the  veil  of  pretence. 
We  are  building,  building  all  the  time  for 
God's  great  judgment-day. 

We  cannot  afford  to  trifle  with  what  is  com- 
monly called  faith.  How  many  young  fellows 
will  make  any  new  resolution,  or  take  any  new 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  57 

stand,  because  of  what  the  preacher  says  ?  Yet, 
young  fellows,  I  mean  every  word.  Faith  is 
real  to  me.  I  will  tell  you  what  I  mean  by 
faith.  I  don't  think  faith  is  the  subscription  of 
belief  to  a  proposition;  that  is  only  the  husk 
of  it.  A  man  may  have  a  most  elaborate 
scheme  of  beliefs,  and  be  a  bad  man  all  the  same. 
You  may  say,  "  I  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  was 
the  Son  of  God."  That  is  well  and  good  in  its 
place ;  "  the  devils  also  believe,  and  tremble." 
But  supposing  you  get  no  further  than  this: 
"  I  hope  that  Jesus  is  the  Master  of  the  un- 
seen, and  I  am  going  to  live  for  Him  with  all 
my  might  and  main,  the  sweetest,  purest,  high- 
est, embodying  all  I  know  or  need  to  know  of 
God,"  that  hope  has  become  faith.  Faith  is 
life  adjusted  to  the  highest  we  can  see.  When 
you  go  back  to  your  business  life,  mark  out  for 
yourself  what  you  believe  to  be  the  highest  that 
God  has  shown  you;  then  be  sure  God  has 
spoken  to  you.  He  is  calling  you  to  manhood, 
and  the  voice  that  speaks  across  the  centuries 
to  you  is  the  voice  that  spoke  in  Galilee  nine- 
teen hundred  years  ago.  *'  Oh,  no !  "  Oh,  yes ! 
If  Jesus  is  not  speaking,  who  is  it?  Can  we 
go  as  far  as  this :  If  it  is  not  Christ,  it  ought 
to  be  ?  Surely  heaven  is  not  cheating  us.  You 
can  build  upon  that  proposition,  unprovable  by 


58    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

intellect,  but  verified  by  experience.  Try  it. 
Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  the  Christ 
shall  speak  with  thee. 

There  are  many  at  the  present  time  whose 
doubts  are  pressed  to  the  front  and  excused, 
and  finally  end  in  a  balancing  of  judgment, 
which  leaves  Christ  as  a  sort  of  pleader  at  the 
bar;  and  there  is  another  counsel  upon  the 
other  side,  and  you,  the  wise,  self-poised,  self- 
contained  judge,  are  waiting  for  the  final  ver- 
dict to  be  pronounced  by  you  by  and  by.  It 
will  be  the  Christ  that  will  pronounce  that 
verdict,  not  you.  Perhaps  He  is  pronouncing 
it  now.  There  are  some  doubts  of  which  a 
man  ought  to  be  ashamed.  I  never  mind  very 
much  what  a  young  fellow  says  to  me  as  to 
his  doubts  about  the  fundamentals  of  our  faith, 
if  his  life  is  strenuous,  real,  earnest,  noble, 
girded  up  to  the  best  that  he  knows;  I  can 
leave  him  alone,  he  will  come  all  right;  ex- 
perience will  put  him  on  the  track  to  the 
holiest.  Most  men  that  are  worth  their  salt 
have  be^n  by  wondering  if  the  foundations 
are  sure.  But  I  never  like  to  see  a  young  fel- 
low brushing  them  aside  contemptuously,  as  if 
they  did  not  matter. 

*'  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 


SPIRITUAL  ]\1ANH00D  59 

Do  not  allow  your  doubts  to  gather  hazy 
clouds  around  your  head  and  keep  them  there. 
Face  them ;  master  them  one  way  or  the  other ; 
take  the  best  you  can  see,  and  live  for  it,  stand 
square  up  to  it ;  you  will  find  that  God  has  not 
left  you  to  yourself.  To  live  manfully  for 
that  which  you  already  know  to  be  true  en- 
larges the  border  of  your  spiritual  experi- 
ence. 

One  word  about  the  moral  struggle  of  the 
man  who  has  but  a  feeble  faith.  Many  of  you 
feel  that  my  stricture  upon  the  careless  life 
missed  the  point  as  applied  to  you.  You  say: 
"  I  don't  want  to  give  rein  to  the  lower ;  if  I 
could  I  would  live  for  the  higher;  but  oh!  the 
power  of  the  unclean !  how  easily  I  am  borne 
down!  It  is  not  that  I  distrust,  I  would  lay 
hold  of  the  Christ  or  anybody  else,  if  I  only 
could  get  up.  That  seems  so  impossible.  I  am 
not  master  of  myself.  Am  I  responsible  for 
the  falls  of  which  I  seem  to  have  been  guilty?  " 
You  are  not  responsible  for  the  battle — that  is 
God's  doing — but  no  man  needs  to  lie  under 
Apollyon ;  God  never  meant  that.  A  young  fel- 
low is  in  a  dangerous  way  who  begins  to  excuse 
himself  for  moral  defeat.  There  is  deliverance 
for  each  and  all.  Do  not  dwell  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  miasma;  stand  up,  and  commit 


60    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

yourself  to  the  highest,  and  then  see  whether 
God  keeps  His  share  of  the  bargain. 

Dr.  Campbell  Morgan  told  me  at  Northfield 
of  an  instance  of  the  kind.  A  poor  man  came 
to  him  after  a  service  on  Round  Top,  where 
the  body  of  Mr.  Moody  lies,  and  said,  "  Do  you 
believe  that  when  you  are  tempted,  and  say, 
*  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan,'  the  victory  is 
won?"  Dr.  Morgan,  after  a  moment,  said, 
"No;  I  do  not."  "Then,"  said  his  interloc- 
utor, "  you  stop  preaching  Christ  and  deliver- 
ance from  sin ;  for  I  have  a  temptation.  I  don't 
want  to  live  with  it;  I  don't  want  to  be  de- 
feated ;  I  would  do  the  best  I  knew  if  I  had  the 
power,  but  I  have  not.  If  I  can't  say,  *  Get 
thee  behind  me,'  and  be  sure  of  victory,  what 
am  I  to  do?  "  Dr.  Morgan  said,  "  Do  you  be- 
lieve that  Christ  said  it,  and  won?"  "Yes; 
I  believe  He  is  the  only  One  who  could  ever  say 
it,  and  win."  "  Then  you  go,  and  in  the  name 
of  Christ,  say,  *  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan,* 
when  your  hour  of  torture  comes,  and  see 
which  gets  the  victory."  "  The  next  morn- 
ing," says  Dr.  Morgan,  "  as  I  drove  up  I  met 
this  man  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  path- 
way in  front  of  me.  He  looked  at  me  with 
radiant  face,  standing  square  on  his  two  feet, 
and  said,  *  Man,  it  works ! '  "     He  had  found 


SPIRITUAL  MANHOOD  61 

the  Christ  a  present  dehverer,  as  well  as  an 
abstract  Saviour;  something  for  everyday  life, 
as  well  as  for  the  pulpit;  and  his  new-found 
faith  in  the  Master  was  one  for  practical  use. 
Stand  square  up  to  the  spiritual  fact,  fight  the 
battle  in  the  name  of  the  Crucified,  and  see 
whether  the  promise  is  not  kept.  The  voice  of 
God  is  heard  as  you  speak,  "  Get  thee  behind 
me."  The  victory  is  won.  Son  of  man,  do  not 
lie  down  before  the  enemy;  stand  upon  thy 
feet  that  the  Christ  may  speak  with  thee. 


IV 


THE  TWO  SONS,  THE  TWO 
DESTINIES 


IV 


THE  TWO  SONS,  THE  TWO 
DESTINIES 

And  he  said  unto  hwt,  Son,  thou  art  ever  with  me, 
and  all  that  I  have  is  thine.  It  was  meet  that  we 
should  make  77ierry  and  be  glad :  for  this  thy  brother 
was  dead  and  is  alive  again ;  and  was  lost  and  is 
found. — Luke  xv.  31, 32. 

NO  doubt  you  have  heard  the  parable 
of  the  Prodigal  Son  expounded,  not 
once  only,  but  many  times.  It  has 
been  a  familar  evangelical  subject,  not  only 
with  preachers  of  this  generation,  but  almost  of 
any,  and  it  has  been  treated  in  a  variety  of 
ways.  But  I  have  little  doubt  that  for  the  most 
part  you  have  been  accustomed  to  hear  the 
prodigal  made  a  rather  interesting  person,  and 
the  elder  brother  not  so.  Our  pity  has  been  re- 
served for  the  unfortunate  individual  who  re- 
turned from  the  far  country,  and  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  regard  the  elder  brother  as 
a  figure  brought  before  us  only  to  be  dismissed 
again  with  ignominy,  as  a  sort  of  villain  of 
the  piece.  Well,  now,  if  we  may  reverently 
65 


66    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

search  the  circumstances,  and  make  inquiry 
into  what  our  Lord's  intention  was,  judging 
by  these  circumstances,  I  do  not  think  you  and 
I  can  come  to  that  conclusion  again.  Christ 
was  far  too  wise  and  knew  too  much  about  the 
facts  of  hfe  to  put  a  premium  upon  the  sowing 
of  wild  oats,  or  to  make  things  as  right  again 
as  if  they  had  never  been  wrong  once  the  prodi- 
gal had  come  back  to  the  father's  house;  and 
He  was  too  wise  and  too  kind  and  just  to  sug- 
gest anything  sinister  about  the  figure  of  the 
elder  brother,  who  is  represented  as  having 
behaved  in  all  things  precisely  as  a  son 
should. 

Now  I  think  it  is  probable  that  I  have  before 
me  both  types,  and  I  want  to  speak  a  faithful 
word  to  you  both,  without,  I  trust,  deviating 
in  any  important  degree  from  our  Lord's 
meaning  and  intent  when  He  first  told  this 
story. 

Let.  us  speak  first  of  the  younger  brother. 
"  A  certain  man  had  two  sons :  And  the 
younger  of  them  said  to  his  father,  Father, 
give  me  the  portion  of  goods  that  falleth  to 
me.  And  he  divided  unto  them  his  living. 
And  not  many  days  after,  the  younger  son 
gathered  all  together,  and  took  his  journey 
into  a  far  country,  and  there  wasted  his  sub- 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES       67 

stance  in  riotous  living."    The  father  allowed 
the  son  to  have  his  full  fling.     He  left  him  to 
himself  till  he  came  to  himself.     God  always 
does  just  that.     If  you  want  to  go  wrong,  you 
shall  go  wrong.    It  sometimes  seems  as  if  God 
helped  us  to  go,  not  that  He  ever  does.     But 
the  facility  is  there,  and  if  a  man  is  determined 
to  waste  his  God-given  powers  he  cannot  es- 
cape.   "  God  is  not  mocked ;  whatsoever  a  man 
soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap."    But  the  pur- 
pose of  the  sad  harvest  is  not  a  vindictive  one. 
God's  punishments  are  chastisements.     Left  to 
himself  the  prodigal  is  till  he  comes  to  himself. 
The  full  consequences  of  sin  are  not  easy  to 
bear.     **  The  way  of  transgressors  is  hard." 
Sometimes  it  seems  as   if  life  were  not  or- 
ganised  upon   that   principle.     "  The   wicked 
flourish  like  a  green  bay  tree."     They  do  not 
all  do  so,  and  you  may  learn  from  those  who 
have  their  hell  in  this  life  that  the  ways  of 
God,  though  past  finding  out,  are  inexorably 
just.     Penalty  waits  upon  wrongdoing.     But 
now  we  are  told,  and  this  story  is  meant  to 
enforce  it,  that  there  is  no  last  moment  with 
God,  no  shutting  of  the  door  of  mercy.     And 
whether  you  dififer  from  me  or  not,  I  cannot 
say  but  that  I  feel  at  heart  as  if  the  meaning 
of  penitential  pain,  and  it  has  no  other  mean- 


68     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

ing,  is  that  the  soul  may  be  brought  to  itself 
and  back  to  its  Maker. 

Now  as  to  the  figure  of  the  elder  brother. 
Some  prodigals,  I  think,  know  pretty  well  that 
all  that  I  have  said  up  to  this  point  is  true. 
Now  as  to  the  elder  brother.  Is  there  such  a 
being?  Our  theology  is  apt  to  become  singu- 
larly confused  on  this  point.  At  one  moment 
we  preachers  seem  to  urge  that  we  are  all 
prodigals,  every  single  man  of  us.  At  another 
time  we  seem  to  urge  that  some  of  us  who  are 
Pharisees,  who  never  have  been  in  the  far 
country  ourselves,  are  hard  upon  the  poor  crea- 
tures who  have.  Well,  now,  both  cannot  be 
true.  The  truth  is  that  there  are  some  of  you 
have  never  been  in  the  far  country.  Though  it 
may  be  that  you  are  not  perfect  characters  by 
any  means,  you  can  afford  to  be  thankful  to 
God  that  you  have  been  kept  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  His  presence  from  your  youth  up. 
Pious  fathers,  praying  mothers,  have  nour- 
ished and  trained  the  character  you  have,  and 
made  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  grows.  Be 
thankful,  for  these  are  facts.  And  the  great 
majority,  perhaps — I  know  not — of  this  con- 
gregation is  not  just  as  the  crowd  of  abandoned 
ones  that  will  parade  Piccadilly  to-night  seek- 
ing to  destroy  manhood  and  womanhood,  and 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES      69 

we  may  as  well  recognise  the  fact.  With  all 
your  faults  and  all  your  mistakes  that  have 
sprung  from  selfishness,  there  are  some  of  you 
who  have  never  wanted  to  quit  the  side  of  God. 
You  have,  as  it  were,  been  in  the  Father's 
house.  Perhaps  the  greatest  miracle  in  the 
Church  to-night  is  not  the  recovered  prodigal, 
but  the  elder  brother  who  has  never  gone  far 
astray. 

Well,  when  our  Lord  introduced  the  figure 
of  the  elder  brother,  do  you  think  He  intended 
him  to  be  reprobated?  Let  us  look  a  little 
more  closely  at  the  narrative.  Jesus  spoke 
these  words  in  Galilee,  at  the  time  when  He 
was  very  popular  with  respectable  people.  Cu- 
riosity had  been  excited  on  the  part  of  those 
who  never  went  to  the  synagogue  at  all,  and 
they  thought  they  would  like  to  hear  this 
strange  teacher  who  came  out  upon  the  road- 
side, and  when  they  flocked  to  the  courtyard  of 
the  house  of  the  publican  that  day  to  listen, 
they  were  astonished  at  the  tenderness  and 
winsomeness  of  His  doctrine  of  the  Divine 
Father's  love.  But  amongst  them,  and  still 
more  surprised,  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd 
stood  the  scandalised  Pharisees.  '*  This  Man 
is  associating  with  publicans  and  sinners.  Can 
we  hear  Him  in  patience  any  longer?  "    So,  at 


70     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

the  close  of  the  discourse  in  which  He  had 
talked  of  the  lost  sheep  and  the  lost  piece  of 
silver  and  the  return  of  the  prodigal,  the 
Master  said  something  to  those  round  about  the 
door.  He  said,  ''  There  were  two  sons,  you 
know.  Be  thankful,  all  you  people  who  have 
never  known  what  it  was  to  be  a  publican  or  a 
sinner  in  the  conventional  sense  of  the  term. 
Come  and  help.  I  have  never  been  a  sinner 
myself,  but  I  was  baptised  as  a  sinner.  *  Thus 
it  becometh  us  to  fulfil  all  righteousness.* 
Come  down  that  you  may  lift  up."  Saviour- 
hood  always  shows  itself  so. 

And  perhaps,  as  I  said  before,  there  was  one 
convert  after  the  sermon  that  day,  that  par- 
ticular part  of  it,  and  that  is  the  man  who 
wrote  this  story  down.  Luke,  the  beloved 
physician,  was  himself  a  Pharisee,  and  he 
caught  the  spirit  of  the  Master,  though  he 
had  never  been  in  the  far  country.  There  was 
no  one  in  the  whole  band  of  them  that  was 
more  sympathetic  to  the  erring  and  fallen  than 
sweet  St.  Luke. 

Look  into  the  narrative  itself.  "  The  elder 
son  was  angry  and  would  not  go  in."  Would 
you  have  gone  in?  Did  it  seem  fair?  Turn 
to  human  nature  and  read  out  of  that  chapter, 
and  we  do  not  see  that  it  was  very  unnatural 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES       71 

and  very  unreasonable  that  the  elder  brother 
should  have  remonstrated  when  he  heard  that 
the  fatted  calf  had  been  killed  and  the  best 
robe  brought  out.  The  father  went  out  and 
entreated  him,  but  the  son  said,  "  Lo,  these 
many  years  do  I  serve  thee  and  never  at  any 
time  transgressed  I  thy  commandments,  yet 
thou  never  gavest  me  so  much  as  a  kid  that 
I  might  make  merry  with  my  friends.  But 
when  this  thy  son  is  come,  who  hath  devoured 
thy  living  with  harlots,  thou  hast  killed  for 
him  the  fatted  calf."  The  father  did  not  deny 
this.  He  was  no  dependent  in  the  house  of 
his  elder  son,  but  was  giving  orders  still, 
though  he  had  divided  unto  them  his  living. 
Instead  of  replying  by  a  word  of  reproach 
and  saying,  "  You  owe  everything  to  me,"  he 
said,  "  It  is  true.  Son,  thou  art  ever  with  me, 
and  all  that  is  mine  is  thine."  Remarkable 
vindication  of  the  character  of  the  man  who 
spoke ! 

Still  further,  there  is  a  very  sweet  touch 
here  that  you  may  miss  if  you  do  not  know  the 
language  from  which  this  chapter  was  trans- 
lated. It  Is  the  use  of  the  word  son,  which  oc- 
curs twice  in  the  course  of  a  few  verses,  and 
though  it  appears  in  English  to  be  the  same 
word,  it  is  not  so.     The  one  means  the  heir. 


72     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

the  inheritor  of  the  substance,  the  name,  the 
repute  of  the  father,  and  the  other  simply 
means  child,  child  of  the  heart's  affection. 
"  When  this  thy  heir  was  come,  who  hath  al- 
ready devoured  thy  living  with  harlots — ^he  is 
inheritor  again."  The  father  replies,  "  My 
child,  thou  art  ever  with  me,  thou  child  of  my 
heart's  best  love,  and  all  that  is  mine  is  thine. 
We  have  been  together,  you  and  I,  all  these 
years,  never  had  any  misunderstanding,  of  one 
spirit  are  we  and  of  one  substance  too.  My 
child  (not  simply  my  heir),  is  it  not  fitting  that 
we  should  keep  together  now?  This  my  son, 
thy  brother,  was  dead  and  is  alive  again,  and 
was  lost  and  is  found." 

Our  Lord  introduces  the  figure  by  saying  he 
was  angry  and  would  not  come  in.  But  mark, 
the  chapter  closes  with  this  suggestive  appeal, 
that  the  last  word  is  the  father's  and  not  the 
elder  brother's.  We  are  not  told  that  he  did 
not  go  in  after  this.  The  truth  is  that  Christ 
stopped  speaking  here,  and  waited  to  see  what 
the  Pharisees  at  the  door  would  do,  and  one 
of  them  came  in,  and  his  name  was  Luke,  and 
he  stood  alongside  Matthew,  who  had  been  in 
the  far  country,  the  elder  brother  and  the 
younger  brother,  the  child  and  the  son — 
brothers  both. 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES       73 

Now  I  think  you  will  see  what  our  Lord  was 
trying  to  do.  He  was  telling-  us  this,  that 
sonship  at  its  best  implies  brotherhood,  and 
that  again  implies  saviourhood.  God  has  two 
ways  of  training  His  children,  the  way  of  love 
and  the  way  of  pain,  and  good  and  bad  alike, 
we  have  to  pass  through  both.  Our  love  to 
those  of  us  who  are  trying  to  do  right,  sooner 
or  later  spells  pain,  and  our  sin,  to  those  who 
are  going  wrong,  does  just  the  same  thing,  but 
there  is  a  whole  world  of  difference  between  the 
two  pains.  I  am  trying  to  bring  that  home  to- 
night. If  we  will  not  learn  by  God's  love  it  is 
often  that  we  have  to  learn  by  God's  pain,  and 
it  has  cost  God  pain  to  teach.  It  has  cost  God 
pain  to  win  the  sinner  by  his  pain — that  in  a 
nutshell  is  the  gospel. 

Of  course,  pain  is  not  always  punishment,  as 
I  have  already  hinted,  and  I  wish,  in  keeping 
true  to  the  gospel  to-night,  to  throw  upon  you 
the  principle  I  am  now  seeking  to  declare, — the 
two  sonships,  the  two  destinies,  both  the  ob- 
jects of  love,  both  suffering  pain,  but  wide  as 
the  world  apart  in  the  way  they  come  to  this 
common  discipline. 

Now  in  all  probability  I  could  from  amongst 
those  who  are  listening  to  me  illustrate  in  full 
my  theme,  just  as  Christ  could  to  the  audiences 


74     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

He  addressed.  There  is  no  book  that  I  know 
of  half  so  interesting  as  the  book  of  human 
nature.  There  are  tragedies  in  this  church, 
there  are  comedies  too.  There  are  stern,  hard 
lives  which  are  yet  noble,  there  are  trifling, 
silly,  butterfly  lives  which  are  selfish,  and  it 
may  be  that  there  are  the  hopeless  lives  of 
those  who  were  once  selfish  to  the  last  degree 
in  taking  their  own  wilful  way,  and  are  now 
paying  for  it.  Not  so  very  far  apart,  perhaps, 
as  seemed  at  first,  are  the  experiences  borne  by 
these.  Even  the  Captain  of  our  salvation  had 
Himself  to  learn  by  suffering,  and  saint  and 
sinner  alike  must  do  the  same.  There  is  no 
man  equal  to  expounding  the  problem  of  pain. 
I  think  we  can  feel  a  meaning,  though  we  can- 
not demonstrate  one.  It  is  this,  that  "  whom 
He  loveth  He  chasteneth,  and  scourgeth  every 
son  whom  He  receiveth."  Nobleness  is  born 
in  the  furnace  of  pain,  and,  speaking  generally, 
and  keeping  away  from  particulars,  I  think 
that  is  the  inevitable  purpose  of  pain. 

Some  of  you  feel  that  this  is  indeed  a  ter- 
rible world.  Do  you  not  see  that  the  Christ 
never  shrank  from  the  experience  which,  per- 
haps, seemed  so  utterly  unreasonable  and  mys- 
terious to  you  ?  As  gold  must  be  tried  by  fire, 
so  the  heart  must  be  tried  by  pain.    Here,  for 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES      75 

instance,  are  family  misfortunes  that  have  to 
be  borne  in  common.  Amongst  this  congre- 
gation is  a  once  light-hearted  lad  or  girl,  now 
a  sad-hearted,  sour-visaged  man  or  woman. 
The  difference  has  been  caused  by  the  gather- 
ing clouds  over  the  rough  places  on  the  road  of 
life;  one  thing  heaped  upon  another,  one  sad 
day  followed  by  a  succession  of  such,  until  now 
a  plaintive  note  has  come  into  the  life,  and  you 
are  sometimes  inclined  to  ask  wearily,  but  al- 
most indignantly,  ''  Why  does  God  cause  me  to 
walk  along  this  path  and  to  bear  this  burden  ?  " 
It  is  not  to  you  that  I  am  primarily  speaking 
to-night.  I  only  have  to  say  this  and  pass  on — 
you  are  not  the  first  that  went  that  way. 

'*  Christ  leads  us  through  no  darker  room 
Than  He  went  through  before." 

It  makes  very  little  difference,  after  all,  what 
your  lot  in  life  may  be.  It  makes  a  very  great 
difference  how  you  face  it,  how  you  take  it, 
how  you  go  through  it.  "  Be  a  hero  in  the 
strife." 

Yet  again,  there  is  the  pain  that  follows 
sin,  which  is  deserved  by  the  sinner,  and  borne 
by  somebody  else  as  well.  I  have  heard  of  a 
suffering  wife  who  has  had  to  bear  the  conse- 
quences of  the  sin  of  a  weak  husband.     They 


76     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

have  shared  them  together,  but  the  larger 
share  has  been  hers.  There  is  not  one  of  this 
kind  in  the  world  only,  but  one  hundred  thou- 
sand, in  this  land  of  ours  it  may  be,  who  have 
to  chant  this  particular  song  of  agony.  See 
how  that  man  comes  staggering  home  at  night 
to  a  house  comfortless  because  he  has  made  it 
so,  to  a  wife  whose  love  and  loyalty  he  ought 
to  have  forfeited  long  ago,  but  has  not,  and 
see  how  she  bears — and  he  is  not  capable  of 
it — the  burden  that  he  alone  has  brought. 
Which  of  these  two  would  you  be?  They  are 
both  suffering,  because  the  remorse  of  the 
weak  man  is  real  enough  when  he  comes  to 
himself.  Oh,  this  problem  of  moral  weakness ! 
I  know  a  wife  who  has  gone  out  in  a  morning 
from  the  apartment  her  husband's  habits  had 
reduced  them  to,  and  walked  the  streets  all 
day  for  fear  the  landlady  should  discover  that 
she  had  nothing  to  eat,  and  that  her  husband 
was  the  cause  of  her  hunger.  I  have  heard  of 
a  father — nay,  I  know  him — who  one  day  with 
awful  sorrow  said  to  me  when  I  inquired  about 
his  son,  "  He  is  dead,  thank  God !  Don't  men- 
tion him  to  his  mother  if  you  happen  to  see 
her."  "  Why?  "  "  Because  we  gave  up  hop- 
ing that  we  could  get  him  right.  We  only  got 
him  home  at  last  when  he  was  helpless,  and  in- 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES      77 

stead  of  recovering  to  go  into  the  far  country 
again,  he  died.  Let  us  thank  God  it  is  no 
worse  than  that."  Here  was  suffering,  a  home 
tragedy.  The  boy  who  was  dying  could  not 
have  died  indifferent.  He  knew  that  his 
father's  grey  hairs  meant  something,  he  knew 
of  the  sorrow  of  his  mother's  heart.  It  must 
have  been  a  terrible  pang  in  his  own.  They 
all  three  suffered,  they  all  came  through  the 
same  experience,  but  by  what  different  ways! 
There  are  many  here  who  have  passed  through 
like  experiences,  doubtless.  Which  would  you 
sooner  be,  the  sufferer  by  another's  fault,  the 
sufferer  who  suffers  because  he  loves,  or  the 
sufferer  who  causes  pain  by  his  selfishness  and 
by  his  sin?  Because  some  of  you  are  to  be 
remembered  in  the  less  worthy  category. 
There  are  young  fellows  here  of  whom  home 
cannot  be  very  proud.  In  your  better  moments 
you  are  sorry, — ah,  more  than  sorry,  almost 
heartbroken, — as  you  think  what  you  have  done 
to  those  who  deserved  the  best  of  you,  and  how 
often  and  how  grievously  you  have  broken 
your  promise.  You  have  tried  to  shield,  it  may 
be,  your  guilty  secret  from  those  at  home  who 
would  trouble  to  hear  it,  to  whom  it  would 
cause  anguish  of  spirit  to  know  it,  but  it  has 
got  to  them — the  world  always  finds  ways  and 


78     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

means  to  do  as  much  mischief-making  as  it 
can.  Oh,  prodigal,  selfish,  delirious  in  your 
moments  of  self-indulgence,  why  do  you  do  it? 
Life  might  treat  you  hardly,  anyhow,  but  I 
would  rather  have  their  pain  than  yours. 
You  are  in  the  far  country,  feeding  upon 
husks ;  the  father,  the  mother,  the  brother,  the 
friend  sorrowing  in  consequence!  They  are 
sharers  in  the  pain  of  God,  they  are  of  the  com- 
pany of  redeemers,  and  if  ever  you  are  saved 
at  all  you  will  be  saved  by  this  mediating  love 
of  theirs — this  love  which  is,  after  all,  only 
the  love  of  God.  They  are  sharers  in  the 
Cross  of  Christ,  filling  up  the  measure  which  is 
behind.    Thus  redemption  comes  to  the  world. 

I  think  I  can  hear  the  Christ  speaking  to 
some  of  the  heartbroken  whose  lives  have  been 
noble :  "  Child,  fellow- worker,  thou  art  ever 
with  Me,  and  all  that  is  Mine  is  thine."  Oh, 
it  is  a  call  to  bear  a  cross  of  this  kind,  and, 
sinner,  if  you  only  knew  it,  it  is  a  merciful 
love  that  you  bear  your  cross,  too,  and  it  is 
waiting  for  you  if  you  have  not  already  begun 
to  bear  it. 

Now  to  the  prodigal  I  would  say  this^ — Be 
thankful  if  you  have  anybody  in  the  world  to 
care  for  you  at  all.  Be  worthy  of  that  love, 
and  never  shirk,  and  never  try  to  shirk  in  un- 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES       79 

manly  fashion,  the  consequences  of  your  own. 
ill-doing.  Of  one  thing  I  am  perfectly  sure, 
that  the  safe  road  is  the  honest  road,  the  brave 
and  the  true.  If  you  have  done  wrong,  go 
straight  round  and  do  right.  Penitence  shows 
itself  there,  not  in  puling,  piping  cries  that  God 
will  let  you  off  the  consequences  and  somebody 
else  bear  something  instead.  No.  It  is  a  sure 
and  certain  thing  that  you  never  can  save 
either  yourself  or  others  whom  you  have  made 
to  suffer  from  the  experiences  they  have  to 
bear,  you  have  to  bear,  the  chastisements  of 
love. 

To  those  nobler  ones  of  whom  the  elder 
brother  is  a  type,  rightly  applied,  I  would  say 
this — ^pray  to  be  faithful  to  your  trust.  Why 
hath  God  given  you  to  stand  in  the  relation 
that  you  do — husband,  wife,  brother,  friend, 
child — why?  Because  you  are  His  trustee.  It 
is  no  accident  that  you  are  where  you  are,  and 
bound  by  invisible  but  infrangible  bonds,  you 
do  not  belong  to  yourself  alone.  Love  is  vo- 
cation. It  means  the  highest  joy,  it  means  pain 
too.  Go  through  with  it.  You  can  see,  per- 
haps, through  the  eyes  of  love  what  no  one 
else  can  but  the  sinner  to  whom  you  were  sent, 
and  that  is  why  you  suffer.  The  other  day, 
while  I  was  waiting  at  the  railway  station,  my 


80     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

eye  fell  on  the  face  of  a  man  whose  character 
I  thought  was  a  little  evident  from  the  expres- 
sion that  he  habitually  wore,  or  seemed  habit- 
ually to  wear.  I  was  not  attracted  by  him, 
perhaps  no  one  else  would  have  been  at  first 
sight.  But  I  saw  a  child,  or  rather  a  young 
girl,  go  up  to  that  forbidding  man  and  fling 
her  arms  around  his  neck.  And  then  I  knew 
that  a  vision  had  been  granted  unto  her  which 
was  hidden  from  my  dull  eyes.  I  had  not  love 
to  teach  me  what  good  there  was  in  that  (per- 
haps) prodigal. 

"  No  soul  can  ever  clearly  see 

Another's  highest,  noblest  part. 

Save  through  the  sweet  philosophy 

And  loving  vp-isdom  of  a  heart. 

*'  I  see  the  feet  that  fain  would  climb, 
You  but  the  steps  that  turn  astray; 
I  see  the  soul,  unharmed,  sublime, 
You  but  the  garment  and  the  clay. 

•*  You  see  the  mortal,  weak,  misled, 
Dwarfed  ever  by  the  earthly  clod; 
I  see  how  manhood  perfected 
May  reach  the  stature  of  a  God." 

This  is  the  meaning  of  this  peerless  teaching 
of  our  Master  concerning  the  chastisements  of 
love.  The  prodigal  suffers  that  peradventure 
he  may  yet  **  reach  the  stature  of  a  God,"  and 
when  he  comes  to  his  home  he  does  not  come 


TWO  SONS,  TWO  DESTINIES       81 

back  to  the  undivided  love,  unto  things  as 
they  v^ere.  No,  they  must  suffer  together — 
father,  brother,  son. 

And  it  is  something  to  know  that  he  v^ho  is 
v^ilHng  to  suffer  for  his  brother's  sake  has  an 
experience  which  knits  him  to  the  Christ. 
God's  work  never  fails.  Soul-agony  spells  a 
victory  any  time,  anywhere,  whether  you  can 
discover  that  result  or  no. 

"  Life  is  ever  lord  of  death 
And  love  can  never  lose  its  own." 

There  is  a  grand  home-coming.  You  do  not 
see  it  all  here.  We  only  get  a  glimpse  of  that 
fair  future,  sublime  and  holy.  We  must  be 
with  God  in  that  hour  of  solemn  triumph. 
Well,  then,  we  must  be  with  God  now.  The 
Spirit  of  Christ  is  abroad  in  the  world  to-day. 
For  all  the  unselfish  ones  who  for  no  interest 
of  their  own  are  willing  to  suffer,  God  be 
praised.  The  elder-brother  spirit  is  saving  the 
world.  To  be  partners  with  Jesus  is  the  grand- 
est vocation  on  earth.  You  will  want  nothing 
save  to  know  that  love  has  conquered  when 
your  full  reward  comes  home.  "  He  shall  see 
of  the  travail  of  His  soul  and  shall  be  satis- 
fied." Like  Him  be  faithful,  be  true,  do  not 
shirk  your  trusteeship.    Go  the  road  the  Master 


82    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

has  marked  out,  never  flinching,  never  falter- 
ing. That  is  the  road  of  safety  and  of  Hght 
and  triumph. 

Oh,  that  we  might  all,  at  the  grand  day  of 
ingathering,  but  see  the  Master  bend  His  gaze 
on  the  faithful  and  say,  "  My  child,  it  was 
worth  it  all,  child  of  My  heart.  Thou  hast 
ever  been  with  Me,  and  all  that  is  Mine  is  thine. 
Let  us  rejoice  together  now,  for  this  thy 
brother  was  dead  and  is  alive  again,  and  was 
lost,  and  is  found." 


V 
OTHER-WORLDLINESS 


V 
OTHER-WORLDLINESS 

Set  your  affection  on  things  above,  not  on  things  on 
the  earth.— Col.  Hi.  2. 

THIS  is  an  echo  of  our  Master's  own 
words,  given  in  the  sixth  chapter  of 
St.  Matthew's  Gospel,  as  well  as 
slightly  modified  in  St.  Luke—''  Lay  not  up  for 
yourselves  treasures  upon  earth,  where  moth 
and  rust  doth  corrupt,  and  where  thieves  break 
through  and  steal:  but  lay  up  for  yourselves 
treasures  in  heaven,  where  neither  moth  nor 
rust  doth  corrupt,  and  where  thieves  do  not 
break  through  nor  steal."  I  say  our  text  is  an 
echo,  almost  an  adaptation  and  an  application 
of  these  beautiful  sentences  of  the  Master  Him- 
self, which  no  one  ever  grows  tired  of  hearing. 
But  it  is  something  more.  The  context  tells 
us  what  that  something  more  is.  "  If  then  ye 
be  risen  with  Christ,  seek  those  things  which 
are  above,  where  Christ  is.  For  ye  died,  and 
your  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God." 

In  other  words,  the  Apostle  is  setting  us  to 
85 


86     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

live  up  to  a  great  spiritual  fact — a  fact  which 
those  who  heard  Christ  speak  did  not  under- 
stand. Now  he  assumes  them  to  understand. 
Christ  the  Conqueror  is  passed  into  the  un- 
seen, Christ  the  Captain,  the  Saviour,  the  Al- 
mighty Friend.  Seek  the  things  that  are 
above,  where  Christ  is,  and  seek  them  through 
this  Christ  to  Whom  by  faith  ye  are  joined, 
"  for  ye  died,  and  your  life  is  hid  with  Christ 
in  God." 

Sometimes  these  wor-ds  and  others  like  them 
have  been  held  to  justify  a  form  of  other- world- 
liness  which  is  not  helpful  nor  admirable. 
There  is  hardly  a  text  in  Scripture  which  can- 
not be  misconstrued  and  made  to  justify  the 
light  which  is  darkness.  Quot  homines,  tot 
sententicB — -sO'  many  men,  so  many  opinions. 
And  almost  every  doctrine  that  has  been 
preached  in  the  name  of  Christianity,  however 
vicious  and  shortlived,  has  been  justified  in 
some  fashion  from  Scripture. 

There  has  been  a  form  of  other-worldliness, 
perhaps  it  still  exists,  which  is  absolutely  mis- 
chievous, and  which  has  been  justified  from 
passages  like  this;  it  has  taken  the  form  de- 
scribed by  Milton  in  that  well-known  phrase, 
"  a  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue.''  There  is 
the  absolutely  selfish  man  who,  in  quest  of  the 


OTHER-WORLDLINESS  87 

salvation  of  his  own  poor,  petty  soul,  shuts  out 
all  consideration  for  his  brother's  needs. 
There  is  the  man  who  cares  not  how  the  world 
goes  so  long  as  he  is  not  made  to  suffer  any  in- 
convenience, and  there  are  people  of  such  sen- 
sitive and  fine  feeling,  so  called,  that  they  can- 
not bear  that  there  should  be  any  jarring  note 
in  the  music  of  their  lives,  or  wail  from  the 
suffering  world  without.  That  is  not  the 
other-worldliness,  you  may  be  perfectly  cer- 
tain, of  which  St.  Paul  speaks.  For  this  man, 
a  prisoner  of  Jesus  Christ,  suffering  stripes  and 
bonds  for  His  sake,  toiling  with  his  own  hands 
that  he  might  be  free  to  carry  the  gospel  where 
he  chose,  this  man,  who  was  a  missionary  at  a 
time  when  Christianity  had  been  heard  of  only 
to  be  scorned,  lived  no  easy  life.  When  he  said, 
"  Seek  those  things  which  are  above,"  he  did 
not  mean,  "  be  indifferent  to  the  things  which 
are  below." 

We  are  told  in  one  breath  in  Holy  Scripture, 
"  Love  not  the  world,  neither  the  things  of  the 
world,"  and  in  another,  "  God  so  loved  the 
world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son,  that 
whosoever  believeth  in  Him  should  not  perish, 
but  have  everlasting  life."  What  are  we  to 
understand  by  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"  world "    as    it    is    employed    in    these    two 


88     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

phrases?  It  is  the  same  word,  but  its  signifi- 
cance is  not  the  same.  In  the  former  sense  it 
stands  for  the  sum-total  of  all  those  things, 
ends,  pursuits  which  seek  their  gratification 
here,  and  must  have  it  here  or  nowhere.  One 
word  will  do  for  all  the  lot,  and  we  put 
down  "  world."  And  what  is  more,  people 
anywhere  now  understand  full  well  what  you 
mean  if  you  speak  of  a  man  of  the  world ;  you 
mean  a  man  whose  aims  are  not  high,  a  man 
who  is  living  for  that  which  gratifies  and 
pleases  just  now,  not  a  man  whose  aims  are  set 
on  things  nobly  above  the  pursuits  of  the  mo- 
ment and  the  conventions  of  the  hour.  In  the 
other  sense  the  word  "  world ''  stands  for  the 
sum-total  of  poor  humanity.  God  so  loved 
these  creatures  of  His,  children  of  His  heart, 
that  God  came  for  them  to  suffer  and  to  die. 
If  you  keep  these  two  things  clear  in  your 
mind,  you  will  understand  a  little  of  the  light 
which  is  thrown  upon  the  duty  of  this-worldli- 
ness  by  the  consecration  that  we  give  to 
motives  which  are  other-worldly.  The  poet 
Southey  phrases  it  very  beautifully  for  us,  in 
lines  which  doubtless  you  know  as  well  as  I  do. 

••  They  sin  who  tell  us  love  can  die; 
With  life  all  other  passions  fly, 
All  others  are  but  vanity. 


OTHER-WORLDLINESS  89 

In  heaven  ambition  cannot  dwell, 

Nor  avarice  in  the  vaults  of  hell. 

Earthly,  these  passions  of  the  earth, 

They  perish  where  they  had  their  birth. 

But  love  is  indestructible, 

Its  holy  flame  for  ever  burneth; 

From  heaven  it  came,  to  heaven  retumeth. 

Too  oft  on  earth  a  troubled  guest, 

At  times  deceived,  at  times  oppressed, 

It  here  is  tried  and  purified, 

Then  hath  in  heaven  its  perfect  rest. 

It  soweth  here  with  toil  and  care, 

But  the  harvest-time  of  love  is  there." 


Has  any  man  ever  made  a  mistake  in  pur- 
suing to  its  noblest  the  ideal  of  love?  Right- 
eousness itself  is  incomplete  except  it  find  its 
highest  and  final  expression  in  love.  You  can 
do  it  here.  Is  it  worldly  ?  It  is  impossible  for 
a  man  to  seek  a  "  fugitive  and  cloistered  vir- 
tue "  whose  life  is  given  to  the  service  of  the 
highest,  and  whose  character  reveals  itself  in 
love.  It  may  be  this-worldly,  but  it  is  other- 
worldly too.  "  The  harvest-time  of  love  is 
there." 

I  think  you  and  I  can  now  see  pretty  plainly 
what  the  Apostle  means  by  our  text,  *'  Set  your 
affection  on  things  above,  not  on  things  on  the 
earth."  It  means  set  your  affection  on  things 
that  are  worthy  to  live,  not  on  things  that  are 
doomed  to  die.    And  affection  is  only  another 


90    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

word  for  mind,  which  is  given  in  the  margin — 
thought,  purpose,  desire,  aspiration.  "  Set 
your  affection  on  things  above,  not  on  things 
on  the  earth."  In  all  your  work,  in  all  your 
ways,  set  your  purpose,  your  mind,  your 
thought  upon  that  which  is  worthy  of  heaven. 
For  though  it  be  but  a  tenant  of  earth  for  the 
time  being,  that  is  where  you  will  find  it. 
"  The  harvest-time  is  there." 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  maintain  this  up- 
ward gaze.  You  know  that  life  is  not  easy  for 
any  man,  but  it  is  always  possible  to  live,  in 
the  strength  of  God,  the  life  of  heaven  amid 
the  things  of  earth.  None  of  us  would  ever 
dream  of  claiming  to  be  perfect.  I  think  the 
nearer  we  are  to  the  ideal  of  Christ,  as  a  rule, 
the  less  we  care  to  claim  it — I  mean  the  less  we 
care  to  claim  that  we  are  standing  near.  We 
are  all  trying — perhaps  I  ought  to  qualify  even 
the  last  sentence.  There  may  be  some  one  in 
the  church  who  is  not  trying,  but  most  men,  I 
think,  when  they  are  tested,  are  conscious  that 
their  deepest  desire,  after  all,  though  it  never 
reaches  the  surface  in  actual  achievement,  is  to 
be  good.  Some  of  the  most  serious  moral  fail- 
ures are  men  who,  if  they  could  by  some  magi- 
cian's wand  be  changed  into  characters  of 
moral  worth,  would  choose  quickly  the  highest. 


OTHER-WOHLDLINESS  91 

I  will  proceed  on  that  assumption,  that  we 
want  to  get  up.  Therefore,  I  repeat  that  it  is 
possible  for  every  single  soul  among  you, — try- 
ing, struggling,  aspiring, — it  is  possible  for  you 
to  live  a  life  that  is  worthy  of  heaven  amid 
these  claims  of  earth.  You  will  never  do  it 
alone.  You  will  be  in  for  some  sorry  and  hu- 
miliating failures  if  you  do  not  seek  in  the 
right  place  for  the  strength  so  to  live.  Lay 
hold  upon  the  risen  Christ.  "  If  then  ye  be 
risen  with  Christ,  seek  the  things  which  are 
above,  where  Christ  standeth."  Be  worthy  of 
that  for  which  you  do  aspire,  and  by  Him  you 
shall  reach  it.  No  man  is  ever  defeated  until 
he  gives  up  trying.  The  only  overthrow  that 
you  have  to  dread  is  when  your  will  turns 
round  and  marches  downward.  Until  that 
point  is  reached,  you  are  not  living  for  this 
world.  You  are  living  for  the  service  of  this 
world  in  the  spirit  of  Christ  Who  has  over- 
come it. 

Now  this  is  a  far  better  thing  to  say  than  to 
say  that  you  are  living  simply  in  the  hope  of 
heaven,  the  conventional  heaven,  the  golden 
streets  and  the  jasper  gates.  I  do  not  mind 
if  there  are  no  such  things  save  in  figure. 
Heaven,  I  take  it,  is  that  state  of  perfect  good- 
ness which  God  is  preparing  for  them  that  love 


92     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

Him,  and  without  it  there  is  no  heaven.  And 
heaven  as  God  sees  it  for  us,  the  heaven  that  is 
to  be,  is  where  goodness  and  gladness  shall  kiss 
each  other.  The  highest  heaven,  the  heaven 
which  Christ  means,  is  the  heaven  of  the  re- 
deemed, purified  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb, 
spotless  before  the  throne  of  God,  pure  as  He 
is  pure.  The  only  heaven  which  is  worth  any 
man's  while  is  that  sort.  What  would  young 
men  think  if  they  were  to  hear  one  of  their 
own  number  saying  to  them,  "  I  am  hoping  to 
go  to  heaven."  They  would  laugh  if  he  said 
he  avoided  this  and  chose  that,  and  clung  to 
this,  perhaps,  and  declined  the  other  in  the 
hope  that  by  and  by  he  would  win  through  and 
enjoy  his  heaven.  I  am  afraid  they  would 
despise  it,  because  the  nearer  a  man  comes  to 
that  ideal  the  less  he  talks  about  the  merely  ob- 
jective side  of  it.  He  speaks  of  the  inner.  The 
man  that  you  would  respect  is  the  man  who  is 
busy  living  the  character  that  need  not  be 
shamed  when  it  stands  before  the  great  white 
throne,  the  man  who  never  lies,  the  man  who 
never  cheats,  the  man  who  masters  the  beast 
that  we  all  carry  within  us,  the  man  who 
knows  the  heaven  of  nobleness,  though  it  costs 
him  something  to  reach  it  down  here.  The 
vindication  is  sure.     It  requires  faith,  and  it 


OTHER-WORLDLINESS  93 

requires  courage  to  live  so.  The  man  is  a  fool 
who  thinks  he  can  do  it  by  himself.  But  it  is 
always  possible.  "  Seek  the  things  that  are 
above,  where  Christ  is."  Let  the  Christ  lift 
you  up.  Set  your  affection  on  things  that  are 
worthy  of  Him,  not  on  things  that,  as  the 
fashion  of  this  world,  are  passing  away.  Yet, 
brethren,  I  expect  heaven.  I  expect  a  heaven 
about  which  we  sing  in  our  hymns,  and  I  am 
not  ashamed  to  say  so.  I  expect  to  see  you  in 
the  company  of  the  redeemed.  I  expect  this 
ideal  that  is  told  almost  at  the  close  *oi  the 
Holy  Book,  "  I  heard  a  great  voice  out  of 
heaven,  saying.  Behold,  the  tabernacle  of  God 
is  with  men,  and  He  will  dwell  with  them, 
and  they  shall  be  His  people,  and  God  Himself 
shall  be  with  them,  and  be  their  God.  And 
God  shall  wipe  away  all  tears  from  their  eyes ; 
and  there  shall  be  no  more  death,  neither  sor- 
row, nor  crying,  neither  shall  there  be  any 
more  pain:  for  the  former  things  are  passed 
away." 

I  take  it  no  man,  however  strong  he  may  be, 
however  self-sufficient  in  character,  who  knows 
life  as  it  is  now,  and  the  battle  you  have  to 
fight  day  by  day,  would  speak  of  that  as  an 
unworthy  ideal.  But  if  it  ever  comes,  my 
friend,  do  you  know  how  it  will  come  ?    "  To 


94     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

him  that  overcometh  will  I  give  to  sit  down 
with  Me  in  My  throne,  even  as  I  also  overcame 
and  am  set  down  with  My  Father  in  His 
throne." 

The  joy  of  heaven  is  the  joy  of  the  con- 
queror. The  noblest  joy  is  that  in  which  pain 
is  latent,  swallowed  up.  Do  you  see  what  I 
mean?  The  joy  that  has  never  known  pain, 
even  though  the  pain  is  swallowed  up,  is  some- 
thing short.  If  you  could  break  up  every  ray 
of  light  in  this  church  to-night,  these  white 
rays  which  make  it  possible  for  us  to  see  each 
other's  faces,  you  would  find  all  the  colours  of 
the  spectrum.  There  is  the  blood-red  ray  there. 
You  cannot  see  it,  but  it  is  there,  swallowed  up. 
That  white  light  would  not  be  the  light  it  is 
but  for  that  blood-red  ray.  I  remember  once 
going  into  a  town  in  the  Potteries  and  to  a  spe- 
cial business  house  there,  where  they  were  pro- 
ducing works  of  art,  vases  and  such  like.  They 
were  paying  high  salaries  to  the  people  who 
paint  certain  designs  in  various  colours  upon 
these  vases  one  by  one.  Then  they  were  placed 
in  a  furnace,  and  when  they  came  out  again  I 
found  that  the  colour,  which  I  could  have 
wiped  off  with  my  hand  before  it  went  into  the 
furnace,  was  now  part  of  the  structure,  a  thing 
of  beauty  and  a  joy  for  ever.    So  God  is  fash- 


OTHER-WOHLDLINESS  95 

ioning  you  and  me.  If  there  is  any  light  which 
has  ever  been  thrown  upon  the  meaning  and 
purpose  of  pain,  it  is  just  this — we  are  here 
that  the  pain  which  God  imposes  upon  us,  and 
by  which  He  trains  us,  may  command  our  re- 
sponse to  the  highest,  and  he  is  worthy  of 
heaven  who  wins  through,  and  even  from  the 
midst  of  his  furnace  keeps  his  gaze  upon  that 
which  is  above. 

A  few  days  ago  I  had  to  go  to  a  sculptor, 
but  I  had  very  little  time  to  spare,  and  before 
I  arrived  the  sculptor  had  prepared  a  sort  of 
model  of  one's  self  from  what  he  had  seen  in 
the  pictures  that  were  given  him.  He  had 
prepared,  as  I  thought  with  wonderful  skill 
and  even  genius,  the  little  model  of  what  he 
meant  by  and  by  as  the  presentment  of  the 
person  he  was  seeing.  I  learned  a  lesson  from 
what  I  saw  there.  He  had  some  failures  be- 
fore he  had  his  success.  He  had  crushed  up 
the  clay  more  than  once,  and  now  I  saw  that  he 
was  making,  as  it  were,  an  idea,  a  soul,  an 
image,  a  presentment  of  something  real  and 
living  that  he  had  never  seen.  Do  you  know 
what  you  are  doing?  You  are  building  in  the 
likeness  of  Christ,  if  so  be  that  you  have  never 
taken  your  eye  from  that  which  is  above. 
Every  one  of  you  is  not  yet  that  man  that 


96     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

shall  be,  but  God  sees  the  man.  Set  your  af- 
fection on  things  above,  press  toward  the  mark 
of  the  high  calling.  God  has  not  done  with 
you,  and  there  will  be  nO'  failure.  The  Christ 
that  is  to  be,  you  are  being  fashioned  into  the 
likeness  of  such.  God  will  take  you  there,  if  you 
do  not  fail  Him  on  the  way.  You  and  I  are 
soldiers  of  the  cross,  we  are  pilgrims  on  the 
heavenly  way,  I  want  you  to  believe.  With  all 
my  might  I  would  impress  this  upon  you.  It 
is  possible,  however  heavy  the  odds  may  be,  it 
is  possible  for  you  to  be  builded  in  the  likeness 
of  Christ.  "  Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons  of 
God,  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall 
be,  but  we  know  that  when  He  shall  appear 
v/e  shall  be  like  Him,  for  we  shall  see  Him  as 
He  is." 

Now  I  have  just  a  few  words  in  application. 
The  first  is  to  those  who  are  struggling,  for 
every  man  has  to  meet  sooner  or  later  tempta- 
tion, the  very  presence  of  which  may  be  a 
horror  to  him.  Some  of  the  young  fellows 
who  have  come  into  this  house  of  prayer  to- 
night came  up  in  the  hope,  it  may  be,  that  some- 
thing would  be  said  to  help  in  this  awful  battle 
with  Apollyon  in  the  Valley  of  Humiliation.  I 
do  not  like  to  go  too  near  to  the  dark  things  of 
life,  but  I  think  I  know  where  your  worst  bat- 


OTHER-WORLBLINESS  97 

ties  are,  and  what  brings  them.  I  know  some 
of  you  dread  taking  upon  yourselves  the  name 
and  profession  of  Christian,  not  only  because  it 
has  been  conventionally  associated  with  a 
spirit  of  pietistic  weakness,  but  also  because 
you  will  not  play  the  hypocrite,  and  you  think 
until  the  beast  is  slain  you  will  claim  no  kin- 
ship with  Jesus.  Well,  you  are  wrong.  You 
are  doing  foolishly  in  fighting  your  battle  by 
yourself,  and  in  thinking  that  the  Christ  re- 
quires perfection.  No,  you  are  in  the  sculp- 
tor's room,  and  he  is  busy  with  the  clay. 

You  make  a  sorry  mistake  if  your  eye  is 
fixed  upon  the  temptation  and  not  on  Him. 
vVe  go  badly  wrong  by  staring  at  the  enemy 
•nstead  of  at  the  Saviour.  You  are  tugging 
dway,  as  it  were,  from  the  presence  of  the 
evil  thing,  but  you  have  not  got  your  gaze  on 
the  ideal  above.  The  way  of  safety  is  not  to 
think  too  much  about  the  enemy,  not  too  much 
reckon  with  him,  but  think  as  much  as  ever 
you  can  about  the  Saviour.  I  used  to  be  a 
C)7'clist,  and  not  a  very  good  one,  and  I  can  re- 
member so  well  one's  amateurish  days,  when 
one  was  seeking  proficiency  on  that  dangerous 
wheel.  Sure  enough  if  one  tried  to  avoid  a 
stone  in  the  pathway,  or  a  ditch  upon  the  road- 
side, one  went  for  that  stone  or  that  ditch. 


98    THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

The  way  not  to  do  so  was  to  look  where  you 
sought  to  go,  and  somehow  the  wheel  went 
there.  Young  men,  do  not  dwell  in  the  region 
of  the  morbid,  do  not  think  too  much  of  the 
shadows  of  life,  do  not  get  into  the  charnel- 
house  of  morbid  experience,  do  not  dwell  with 
the  enemy.  It  is  no  cowardice  to  turn  your 
back  upon  him  sometimes;  that  is  the  way  to 
show  your  faith.  Set  your  gaze  higher,  on 
the  ideal  of  the  Saviour. 

I  am  speaking  to  others  here  who  know  how 
fierce  the  battle  is  with  one's  self.  You  make 
your  own  universe,  so  to  speak.  No  one  has 
ever  wrought  you  overmuch  harm.  It  just 
depends  what  sort  of  a  man  you  carry  within, 
how  the  world  looks  to  you.  Well,  oftentimes 
the  battle  with  one's  self  is  best  won  by  for- 
getting one's  self,  looking  away  to  the  great 
humanity  with  its  needs,  its  struggles,  its  fail- 
ures, and  its  victories.  The  man  whose  eyes 
are  always  turned  inward  is  in  a  dangerous 
condition.  Get  a  pure,  unselfish  purpose.  It 
matters  not  very  much  what  it  is. 

The  best  other- worldliness  is  to  do  your  best 
to  purify  this  world.  You  are  setting  your  af- 
fection on  things  above  when  you  say  to  your- 
self, "  I  am  going  to  try  what  I  can  do  to  make 
the  world  a  little  better  than  I  found  it,"  and 


OTHER-WORLDLINESS  99 

by  and  by  morbid  imaginings  will  disappear, 
and  you  will  be  saved  from  that  sad  form  of 
self-consciousness  in  which  a  man  is  always 
chronicling  his  own  successes  or  his  own  de- 
feats. Look  out,  look  up.  The  world  is  wide, 
and  the  Christ  is  the  Saviour  of  us  all.  Give 
yourself  to  such  service  as  He  would  have  you 
render  unto  your  needier  fellows.  The  world 
is  divided  into  strugglers  and  helpers.  You 
and  I  are  sometimes  in  one  class  and  sometimes 
in  the  other.  The  struggler  is  the  better  for 
his  struggle,  and  the  helper  for  the  helping. 
Go  up  both  together  to  the  ideal  which  has  set 
you  both  to  work. 

I  would  like  to  speak  one  word  of  comfort 
unto  some  who  do  not  need  to  be  told  that  this 
world  is  only  the  beginning,  and  not  the  end  of 
things,  for  their  interest  in  it,  it  may  be,  is  not 
very  great  since  God  took  away  from  them  the 
nearest  and  the  best.  It  used  to  be  easier  for 
you  to  seek  the  things  that  are  above  because 
of  that  wise  friend,  that  beloved  husband,  wife, 
mother,  or  father  upon  whom  you  could  lean, 
and  to  whom  you  could  look.  God  becomes  in- 
carnate in  good  men,  and  the  Saviourhood  of 
Christ  is  read  through  the  character  of  those 
who  have  been  fashioned  by  it.  It  is  not  wrong 
to  say  so.    Now  how  does  it  look  ? 


100     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

"  Seems  the  earth  so  poor  and  vast, 
All  our  life-joy  overcast  ?  " 

Well  now,  instead  of  dwelling  upon  the  sor- 
row and  the  separation  and  the  tomb  and  the 
grizzly  figure  of  death,  set  it  yonder! 

It  will  pass,  this  time  of  yours,  this  heart 
sorrow,  this  wringing  agony.  You  can  only 
feel  as  you  do  because  God  is  busy  making  you, 
and  every  blow  of  His  chisel  brings  the  ideal  a 
little  nearer.  Set  your  affection  on  that  ideal, 
and  never,  even  in  your  blackest  hour,  take 
your  gaze  away. 

To  some  of  you  earth's  bereavements — ^be- 
reavements because  of  the  conduct  of  the  living 
— are  worse  than  the  bereavements  of  death. 
Here  is  a  man  whose  whole  life  has  been 
changed  by  the  injury  done  to  him  through  the 
conduct,  the  selfish  conduct  of  another.  You 
are  brooding  over  it,  you  are  lying  down  beside 
it,  as  it  were,  or  rather  it  is  on  the  top,  and  that 
injury  has  been  magnified  a  thousand  times 
since  it  was  first  inflicted  upon  you.  You  have 
allowed  it  to  master  your  judgment  and  your 
conscience  and  your  feeling  and  now  your  soul. 
Have  you  not  done  wrong?  Have  you  not 
made  a  mistake?  There  was  another  way. 
Why  did  you  not  lift  far  above  that  injury 
your  faith  in  the  Crucified  ?    "  Father,  forgive 


OTHER-WORLDLINESS  101 

them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do  " that 

is  where  Christ  stands.  ''  Set  your  affection 
on  things  above,  where  Christ  is."  "  For  ye 
are  dead,  and  your  Hfe  is  hid  with  Christ  in 
God."  You  do  not  need  to  be  angry  with  any 
man  who  has  ever  done  you  harm ;  you  do  not 
need  to  be,  if  you  could  see  that  man  as  he 
really  is  and  as  he  really  feels,  and  not  as  he 
seems.  All  injuries  in  God's  economy  recoil 
upon  him  that  inflicts  them.  "  It  must  needs 
be  that  offences  come,  but  woe  unto  that  man 
by  whom  they  come."  But  you  are  conquered 
by  a  wrong  the  moment  the  thought  of  venge- 
ance arises  in  your  soul.  Do  not  go  down 
underneath  these  blows  of  wickedness,  rise  up 
looking  clearly  in  the  face  of  the  Master.  "  Set 
your  affection  on  things  above." 

I  would  like  to  make  to-morrow  different  for 
some  of  you  if  I  could.  We  are  just  a  company 
of  brethren  talking  together  about  life  and  the 
thing  we  make  it.  We  do  not  know  very  much 
about  each  other,  and  before  the  week  is  out 
some  of  us  will  be  hard  upon  the  others.  Let 
us  try  the  better  way.  I  would  like  to  send 
you  out  to  your  work  in  the  morning,  back  to 
your  home  circle  to-night,  filled  with  a  high 
hope  and  a  noble  courage.  I  would  like  to 
breathe  into  you  the  spirit  of  Christ,  which  is 


102     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

the  spirit  of  His  great  servant  who  wrote  these 
words.  I  would  Hke  to  make  you  as  Paul  was. 
It  is  possible!  It  is  possible!  If  he  lived  that 
life,  you  can  and  I  can.  Shall  I  tell  you  what  to 
do?  Go  on,  go  up,  keep  true,  trust  as  simply 
as  ever  you  can  in  the  living  Lord,  and  He 
will  never  fail  you  nor  let  you  down.  "  They 
that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their 
strength;  they  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as 
eagles;  they  shall  run  and  not  be  weary;  they 
shall  walk  and  not  faint." 


VI 
AMBITION,  TRUE   AND   FALSE 


VI 
AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE 

Seekest  thou  gnat  things  for  thyself?    Seek  them 
not.—Jer.  xlv.  J". 

IT  is  related  of  the  late  Charles  Haddon 
Spurgeon  that  at  the  commencement  of 
his  ministry,  when  he  was  beginning  to 
feel  conscious  of  the  wonderful  powers  with 
which  God  had  endowed  him — like  most  young 
people,  I  suppose,  for  he  was  but  a  boy,  or 
little  more  than  a  boy  at  the  time — he  was 
one  day  walking  across  a  common  and  seemed 
to  hear,  as  it  were,  a  voice  speaking  to  his  in- 
nermost consciousness  in  the  terms  of  my  text, 
*'  Seekest  thou  great  things  for  thyself?  Seek 
them  not."  Mr.  Spurgeon  accepted  the  text 
which  flashed  into  his  mind  as  a  Divine  message 
and  monition,  and  from  that  moment  made  a 
fuller  consecration  of  himself,  his  life,  his  op- 
portunity, his  power  to  the  service  of  the  living 
God.  We  know  the  result,  and  looking  back 
upon  it  we  know  it,  much  better,  I  venture  to 
think,  than  he  did  even  on  the  day  of  his 
105 


106     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

death,  but  not  better  than  he  knows  it  now. 
He  chose  the  good  part,  which  was  not  taken 
from  him.  He  set  his  affections  on  things 
above,  not  on  things  of  the  earth. 

Now,  all  that  was  best  worth  his  while,  all 
that  was  as  the  reward  of  his  seeking,  and  his 
noble  method  of  living  has  come  to  him.  We 
will  agree  that  he  chose  rightly  in  the  day  that 
he  obeyed  the  Divine  monition  which  is  our 
text.  Yet  remember  what  it  cost  him.  Mr. 
Spurgeon  was  not  what  we  ordinarily  call  a 
liberally  educated  man,  and  because  of  certain 
peculiarities  in  his  methods,  and  in  his  manner 
of  setting  forth  truth,  he  was  exposed  to  perse- 
cution even  on  the  part  of  well-meaning  people. 
And  because  he  was  a  prophet,  and  a  faithful 
servant  of  God  at  that,  and  never  blinked  the 
truth,  however  unwelcome  it  might  be  to  his 
hearers,  he  suffered  contumely,  and  his  work 
was  attended  by  every  circumstance  of  ridi- 
cule and  contempt.  At  the  outset  of  his  minis- 
try, I  think  he  was  almost  invariably  misunder- 
stood except  by  the  few — for  they  were  com- 
paratively few,  after  all — that  gathered  round 
him.  But  the  time  came,  and  now  is,  when 
England  saw  the  value  of  that  man,  knew 
and  loved  him  for  his  personal  worth,  and 
there  is  scarcely  anybody,  I  should  imagine,  on 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE    107 

the  globe  to-day  who  has  heard  his  name  but 
would  give  him  credit  for  sincerity  and  un- 
selfishness all  his  life  through,  from  the  first 
day  of  his  public  service  for  the  Master  unto 
the  last.  We  know  him  now.  Well,  brethren, 
there  was  the  secret,  after  all — he  chose  an 
interest  higher  than  his  own,  and  he  chose  a 
Master  higher  and  worthier  than  the  world. 

Now,  in  the  thought  that  some  young  fel- 
lows listening  to  me  may  be  standing  at  the 
parting  of  the  ways,  which  go  to  the  making 
or  unmaking  of  destiny,  I  have  chosen  this 
text,  which  meant  so  much  to  Mr.  Spurgeon, 
and  have  read  it  in  your  hearing  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  be  a  Divine  message  to  your  soul. 
Mr.  Spurgeon  deliberately  renounced  worldly 
ambition.  That  is  what  I  want  you  to  do.  But 
do  not  make  any  mistake  and  think  that  I  mean 
you  to  renounce  ambition  in  the  truer  sense, 
because  Mr.  Spurgeon  certainly  did  not.  I 
want  you  to  see  what  is  the  difference  between 
ambition  false  and  ambition  true  and  to  en- 
deavour, if  I  can,  to  clear  away  some  confusion 
of  thought  which  clings  around  this  particular 
subject. 

What  is  ambition,  as  commonly  understood  ? 
You  will  gather  it,  I  think,  from  such  familiar 
phrases  as  "  that  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds," 


108     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

or  *'  by  this  sin  fell  the  angels."  Ambition,  as 
commonly  understood,  might  be  so  expressed, 
and  you  have  a  fairly  clear  idea  in  your  minds, 
I  am  sure,  at  this  moment  of  what  such  ambi- 
tion is,  and  it  stands  condemned. 

It  takes  many  forms.  If  one  wished  to  sug- 
gest a  name  or  a  life  in  which  ambition  had 
freest  and  most  unrestricted  reign,  I  think  we 
should  name  Napoleon.  He  is  the  classical,  out- 
standing instance ;  not  that,  I  am  quite  sure,  he 
is  any  more  guilty  than  thousands  of  persons 
before  him  and  since.  But  in  Napoleon  ambi- 
tion, insatiate  and  unconcealed,  had  undis- 
puted sway.  He  waded  to  his  throne,  as  has 
been  said,  through  the  blood  and  tears  of  mil- 
lions. He  allowed  no  scruple  of  affection  to 
stand  in  his  way  if  he  wished  to  add  one  more 
jewel  to  his  crown.  And  after  all,  what  did  it 
amount  to  ?  We  know  him  now.  I  think  many 
even  of  his  contemporaries  knew  him  then :  the 
French,  who  suffered  because  of  his  military 
ambition,  as  much  as  the  rest  of  Europe,  knew 
him  as  a  man  who  had  sold  his  soul,  as  it  were, 
that  he  might  gratify  his  lust  for  power.  I 
never  care  to  be  too  hard  on  a  conventional 
type  of  a  particular  failing  for  fear  one  should 
happen  to  be  wrong,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  said  of 
Napoleon  that  perhaps  he  had  the  mightiest  in- 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     109 

tellect  that  was  ever  packed  into  a  human  skull. 
Judged  by  the  facts  as  they  appear  to  us,  that 
intellect  was  prostituted.  It  never  was  exalted 
as  it  might  have  been,  and,  as  I  believe  sin- 
cerely, God  meant  it  to  be. 

Another  instance,  however,  that  I  may  give 
you,  and  of  a  different  kind  of  ambition,  more 
sordid  perhaps,  was  that  of  Jay  Gould,  the 
American  millionaire.  I  know  nothing  of  the 
private  life  of  this  man  except  that  I  remember 
to  have  heard  somewhere  that  he  was  not  un- 
kindly at  home,  but  when  he  died  a  howl  of 
execration  from  ten  thousand  throats  followed 
him  to  his  grave.  It  was  the  curses  of  the  men 
whom  he  had  ruined.  He  was  a  strong  man, 
he  knew  what  he  wanted  and  he  got  it,  but  he 
got  it  by  riding  rough-shod  over  broken  hearts. 
He  made  his  pile,  he  gratified  his  ambition — 
what  was  it  worth? 

Yet  another  type  is  Cecil  Rhodes.  Here, 
again,  I  speak  somewhat  diffidently,  because 
very  different  opinions  obtain  in  regard  to  the 
worth  and  work  of  Cecil  Rhodes.  But  this 
is  my  view  of  his  life.  He  had  a  great  idea 
as  to  the  position  and  place  of  England  in  the 
world.  More  than  that,  he  believed  in  the 
mission  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  But  he  was 
not  too  scrupulous  in  his  attempts  to  realise  his 


110     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

ideal,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  facts  as  they 
appeared  to  us.  He  would  have  done  almost 
anything  to  have  swept  out  of  his  way  an 
obstacle  to  the  ideal  with  which  he  was  ob- 
sessed. It  was  a  form  of  ambition  not  so  des- 
picable as  Napoleon's,  because  it  was  less  self- 
centred,  but  I  venture  to  think  it  was  material- 
istic and  mistaken,  and  now  that  the  great  man 
has  gone  there  are  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  us  who,  looking  upon  his  career,  pronounce 
those  saddest  words  of  tongue  or  pen,  the  sad- 
dest of  all,  "  it  might  have  been."  Cecil  Rhodes 
was  a  great  empire  builder,  we  are  told.  He 
might  have  been  more  than  that.  He  sought 
great  things,  and  he  saw  himself  associated 
with  them.  Do  you  feel,  you  young  men,  that 
his  is  the  highest  ideal  and  the  type  to  which 
you  would  like  to  conform  your  character  ?  I 
trust  to  be  able  to  show  before  I  close  that  it 
was  not. 

It  is  true  that  the  general  good  may  ac- 
company such  self-seeking  as  I  have  tried  to 
illustrate  here.  A  great  historian,  not  long 
dead,  has  said,  "  The  best  work  in  the  world, 
perhaps,  is  being  done  by  men  who  are  scrupu- 
lous as  to  aim  but  unscrupulous  as  to  means, 
yet  who  in  their  very  self-seeking  manage  to 
benefit  the  human  race."    Well,  true,  but  if 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     111 

the  self-seeking  were  out  of  account,  would  not 
the  benefit  to  the  human  race  be  incalculably 
greater?  The  busy  man  whom  we  call  a 
faddist  often  does  considerable  mischief  by 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  his  conscience,  but 
his  mischief  is  on  nothing  like  so  great  a  scale 
as  that  of  an  unscrupulous  man  who,  in  search 
of  what  he  thinks  to  be  a  justifiable  ideal,  makes 
one  mistake.  We  all  agree  in  condemning  self- 
seeking  if  it  is  blatant  self-seeking  that  makes 
great  mistakes,  but  we  are  not  so  hard  in  our 
condemnation  of  self-seeking  if  it  is  done  in  a 
corner.  We  assume  in  most  people  a  selfish 
motive.  Perhaps  we  are  right  in  a  good  many 
instances,  but  we  are  not  right  all  the  time. 
You  men  of  the  world  know  perfectly  well  how 
you  weigh  each  other  up.  You  see  a  good 
thing  done  for  which  a  man  is  receiving  an 
amount  of  public  credit,  and  you  promptly  ask, 
"  What  is  his  aim  ?  What  axe  has  he  to 
grind?"  You  can  scarcely  bring  yourself  to 
believe  in  disinterestedness,  because,  so  far  as 
you  have  been  able  to  see,  people  who  were  ap- 
parently disinterested,  really  had  some  ulterior 
motive  that  would  not  bear  the  light. 

You  know  among  your  associates,  for  ex- 
ample— in  the  business  house,  it  may  be — the 
difference  between  the  man  of  modest  ambi- 


112     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

tion  and  the  man  of  scheming  unscrupulous- 
ness.  You  prefer  the  former,  but  you  seldom 
beheve  that  he  has  no  axe  to  grind  of  his  own. 
In  most  cases  you  are  right,  but  beware  of 
general  statements.  You  need  some  qualifica- 
tion, and  a  general  statement  like  that  inevi- 
tably leads  to  cynicism. 

I  think  the  chief  danger  of  to-day  is  not  that 
men  are  too  ambitions,  but  that  they  serve  the 
wrong  form  of  ambition.  There  are  men  in 
your  business — perhaps  a  good  many  of  those 
who  are  here  present  could  be  included  in  the 
category,  who  are  at  fault  not  because  they 
have  too  much  ambition,  but  because  they  have 
not  enough  of  the  right  sort.  I  was  struck,  and 
painfully  so,  on  my  visit  to  America,  with  the 
contrast  between  the  ideals  of  the  young  Ameri- 
can and  the  ideals  of  the  young  Englishman. 
As  far  as  I  was  able  to  read  them,  there  a  man 
expects  to  get  on  and  usually  does  it. 

Success  is  not  always  unworthy  by  any 
means,  and  even  if  it  is,  it  is  no  more  unworthy 
than  the  selfish  negation  of  ambition  that  one 
sometimes  sees  among  our  own  youth.  The 
man  who  will  not  work,  the  man  who  will  not 
aspire — and  there  are  plenty  of  them  in  our 
country — the  man  who  never  wishes  to  be  any 
better  or  more  useful,  or  to  live  his  life  more 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     113 

completely  than  now,  is  of  no  benefit  to  society, 
and  his  selfishness  is  as  real  as  the  selfishness 
of  any  Napoleon  or  Jay  Gould  of  them  all. 

You  owe  something  to  God,  you  owe  some- 
thing to  men.  There  is  not  one  among  you  who 
is  an  isolated  unit.  The  man  who  thinks  he 
is  making  no  great  claim  upon  society  and 
stands  in  nobody's  way,  and  refuses  to  do  his 
best,  is  entitled  to  no  credit  for  renouncing 
ambition.  God  has  given  him  a  talent  to  use, 
and  he  is  not  using  it,  and  on  the  great  day 
that  talent  will  be  required  of  him  again  with 
usury. 

Carlyle  puts  more  clearly  than  I  can  the 
distinction  between  the  true  ambition  and  the 
false.  Nothing  I  say  will  be  equal  to  it  in 
force  and  point.  ''  Let  me  say  that  there  are 
two  kinds  of  ambition,  one  wholly  blameable, 
the  other  laudable  and  Inevitable.  .  .  .  The 
selfish  wish  to  shine  over  others,  let  it  be 
accounted  altogether  poor  and  miserable." 
"  Seekest  thou  great  things  for  thyself  ?  Seek 
them  not.''  This  is  most  true.  "  And  yet  I 
say,"  continues  Carlyle,  "  there  Is  an  Irrepress- 
ible tendency  In  every  man  to  develop  himself 
according  to  the  magnitude  which  nature  has 
made  him  of,  to  speak  out  and  to  act  out  what 
nature  has  laid  in  him.    This  is  proper,  fit,  In- 


114     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST, 

evitable ;  nay,  it  is  duty,  the  duty  of  duties.  For 
man  the  meaning  of  Hfe  here  on  earth  might 
be  defined  as  consisting  in  this — to  unfold  your- 
self, to  work  what  thing  you  have  the  faculty 
for.  It  is  a  necessity  for  every  human  being, 
the  first  law  of  our  existence." 

I  am  going  to  try  and  spiritualise  even  fur- 
ther, if  I  can,  that  wonderful  principle  set  forth 
by  Carlyle.  True  ambition  is  to  live  out  what 
is  in  you  for  the  sake  of  Him  who  gave  you 
life.  It  is  a  wonderful,  it  is  even  an  awful, 
thought  that  God  Himself  finds  fulfilment 
through  what  you  are.  God's  work  is  being 
done,  God's  thoughts  and  purposes  are  being 
realised  by  these  apparently  commonplace  men 
and  women  that  I  see  around  me,  and  every  one 
of  you  is  the  embodiment  of  the  Divine. 
Would  you  shrink  and  shrivel  that  Divine 
which  God  has  given  you?  It  is  to  be  mani- 
fested not  only  for  your  own  sake,  nor  chiefly 
so,  but  for  the  sake  of  Him  who  gave  it  and 
for  the  sake  of  mankind.  I  want  to  warn  you 
against  misusing  God's  great  gift,  your  own 
soul.  The  first  that  you  will  ever  be  asked  for 
in  the  great  day  of  revelation  will  be  your  own. 
There  never  was  any  one  like  you  in  the  world 
before,  and  there  never  will  be  again.  You  are 
a  unique  product  in  the  universe,  and  there  are 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     115 

unmeasured  possibilities  before  every  man  here. 
Each  of  us,  all  of  us  are  citizens  of  eternity. 

The  other  day  in  a  sculptor's  studio  I  heard 
some  words  of  wisdom  from  a  man  who  has 
time  to  stand  and  think  while  he  is  at  work. 
One  very  shrewd  observation  he  passed  upon 
life  was  this.  He  said  there  are  two  kinds  of 
men.  There  is  the  man  in  whom  the  Divine 
life  is  manifesting  itself,  the  man  who  loves 
his  work  and  lives  for  it,  the  man  who  does 
his  best  to  read  it  out;  and  there  is  the  hewer 
of  wood  and  the  drawer  of  water,  whose  hat 
goes  on  the  moment  the  clock  strikes  five  and 
he  is  out  of  the  shop.  There  is  all  the  differ- 
ence in  the  world  between  these  two — the  man 
who  cares  to  do  something  well,  and  the  man 
who  does  not  care  to  submit  to  anything  like 
sacrifice  or  pain,  cost  what  it  may  to  other 
people.  He  was  right  about  that.  The  true 
ambition  is  that  of  a  man  who  is  not  afraid  to 
endure,  not  afraid  to  sacrifice,  not  afraid  to 
spend  his  soul,  for  in  giving  he  is  gaining,  and 
he  shall  have  more  abundantly. 

Now,  young  men,  I  want  to  warn  you  before 
I  go  on  against  possible  disappointment  even 
in  your  endeavour  to  live  up  to  your  ideal.  It 
may  be  that  while  I  have  been  speaking  in  these 
terms  to  you  some  old  and  wise  man  in  this  as- 


116     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

sembly  may  have  been  thinking  to  himself, 
"  That  preacher  will  change  his  tone  in  a  few 
years  when  he  knows  how  sadly  life  can  disil- 
lusion and  can  trample  upon  our  ideals."  Oh, 
the  tragedies  of  life,  the  hopes  blighted,  the  old 
men  who  are  just  doing  their  day's  work  in 
patience  that  expects  no  more!  There  are 
crowds  of  them  here,  who  began  life  as  you 
young  fellows  are  doing,  expecting  great  things 
and  believing  that  there  were  great  things  for 
them  to  do,  but  now,  as  the  evening  of  life  ap- 
proaches, they  know  that  they  have  not  realised 
their  hopes,  that  the  world  would  not  let  them, 
that  the  twilight-time  is  sad. 

You  are  only  saying  what  has  been  said  be- 
fore. That  poor,  unhappy  genius,  Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley,  saw  a  little  further  than  the  dis- 
appointment when  he  told  us  in  so  many  words 
that  it  is  never  possible  for  the  soul  to  live 
itself  out  completely  here.  How  should  it  be? 
Because  here  is  not  the  close  of  our  destiny. 
It  will  take  all  eternity  for  you  to  live  out  what 
God  has  put  in. 

•'  We  have  passed  age's  icy  caves, 
And  manhood's  dark  and  tossing  waves, 

And  youth's  smooth  ocean,  smiling  to  betray  ; 
Beyond  the  glassy  gulfs  we  flee 
Of  shadow-peopledj  infancy, 
Through  death  and  birth,  to  a  diviner  day." 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     117 

Never  think  that  you  are  going  to  live  out 
all,  but  I  think  you  will  save  yourself  from 
disappointment  and  pessimism  if  you  will  only 
say,  "  It  is  possible  for  me  to  get  on  the  right 
track  now  and  be  living  out  in  time  that  which 
I  shall  live  out  better  when  eternity  comes."  It 
is  possible  for  you  to  give  a  whole-hearted,  un- 
selfish allegiance  to  a  great  ideal,  and  that  not 
for  your  own  sake.  There  is  a  Divine  idea 
pervading  the  visible  universe,  the  spirit  of 
truth  and  beauty  and  good.  We  are  called  to 
service,  every  one  of  us  is  called  to  reveal  and 
express  that  Divine  idea  in  some  fashion.  For 
us  it  is  embodied  in  Jesus  Christ.  I  cannot  but 
halt  there.  The  Christ  contains  for  me  all  that 
humanity  is  able  to  aspire  to  or  understand,  the 
great  Divine  idea.  The  life  that  is  given  to 
Christ  is  well  invested.  It  has  produced  the 
best  results  in  the  history  of  human  character. 
What  a  man  was  Paul!  The  world  was  his 
oyster  when  he  was  a  young  man,  and  he  might 
have  opened  it  with  his  genius,  and  who  knows 
where  that  brilliant  Jew  might  have  stopped  if 
he  had  entered  the  service  of  the  Caesars  ?  But 
the  Christ  crossed  his  path,  and  this  ambitious, 
zealous,  burning  soul  changed  to  something 
else,  Saul  the  persecutor  became  Paul  the 
apostle,  lived  a  suffering  life  and  died  an  ob- 


118      THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

scure  death  in  a  Roman  prison;  and  this  was 
his  verdict  when  the  evening  came — ''  I  have 
fought  the  good  fight,  I  have  finished  my 
course,  I  have  kept  the  faith.  ...  I  am  now 
ready  to  be  offered."  Paul  knew  that  his  hfe 
was  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  He  knew  that  this 
is  the  shadow-time,  the  other  side  is  the  reahty. 
He  chose  on  the  day  of  the  heavenly  vision,  and 
the  Master's  comment  on  the  choice  is  this^ — 
"  I  will  show  him  how  great  things  he  must 
suffer  for  My  name's  sake." 

Young  men,  I  strongly  urge  you,  the  mag- 
nificent young  life  that  I  see. 'around  me,  to 
choose  the  life  wherein  you  can  throw  your  best 
energies  for  God.  Have  a  purpose  therein.  Do 
not  fear  to  give  back  to  Him  the  life  He  has 
placed  in  your  keeping.  Beware  of  seeming  to 
•drift  into  a  destiny.  Let  your  choice  be  ra- 
tional, let  it  be  strong,  let  it  be  pure.  I  care  not 
what  vocation  you  have  chosen  so  long  as  you 
be  faithful  to  that  which  you  have  chosen.  By 
and  by  you  shall  do  greater  things  than  these. 
In  time  be  faithful  to  the  little  that  you  can  do, 
that  in  eternity  you  may  do  the  more  for  God. 
Believe  that  you  have  a  vocation,  a  vocation  for 
God.  You  will  not  live  out  all  that  is  within 
you  here.  You  cannot.  But  if  you  live  only 
for  yourself  here  you  will  be  a  wretched  man. 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     119 

Give  the  best  to  God ;  I  would  not  care  to  join 
the  ranks  of  the  disappointed  people  who  have 
tried  for  their  own  sake,  and  their  own  sake 
alone,  and  have  miserably  failed  by  their  very 
success. 

"  If  there  be  good  in  that  I  wrought, 

Thy  hand  declared  it,  Master,  Thine; 
Where  I  have  failed  to  meet  Thy  thought, 
I  know  through  Thee  the  blame  is  mine. 

'"One  stone  the  more  swings  to  her  place 
In  that  dread  temple  of  Thy  worth; 
It  is  enough  that  through  Thy  grace 
1  saw  naught  common  on  Thy  earth." 

What  can  you  do  to  bless  the  world,  to  live 
that  fuller  life?  You  must  consecrate  your 
powers  to  that  which  is  higher  than  self.  It 
can  be  done,  it  has  been  done  marvellously  by 
very  ordinary  men. 

We  have  all  read  that  psychological  novel 
"  John  Inglesant,"  with  its  too  self-conscious 
hero.  One  character  drawn  therein,  that  of  a 
Jesuit  who  for  a  time  is  spiritual  adviser  to 
John  Inglesant,  seems  to  me  to  be  a  remark- 
able one.  I  know  not  whether  such  a  Jesuit 
ever  existed,  but  you  know  this,  the  Jesuits  by 
their  system  of  training  manage  to  squeeze  out 
of  every  man  upon  whom  they  get  their  grip 
any  thought  of  living  for  his  own  self-interest. 
He  becomes  the  bond-slave  of  the  society.    They 


120      THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

have  great  strength  from  the  fact  that  they  can 
thus  obsess  a  man,  as  it  were,  de-self  him,  and 
make  him  work  for  the  great  organisation. 
Here  is  the  Jesuit's  verdict  to  John  Inglesant 
upon  his  own  Hfe,  an  exhortation  for  his  pupil : 
Choose  your  side  or  your  lot;  when  you  have 
chosen  it,  be  true  to  it  all  the  way.  It  matters 
comparatively  little  what  a  man  chooses  as  his 
course  of  action  provided  it  be  a  worthy  one 
and  his  conscience  tells  him  so,  but  when  he 
has  chosen,  no  looking  back.  Go  straight  on, 
be  faithful  to  the  uttermost,  cost  what  it  may. 
A  grand  and  a  glorious  ideal  for  the  twentieth 
century,  as  well  as  for  the  seventeenth!  We 
know  how  possible  it  is  for  a  young  woman  to 
give  her  whole  life  and  thought  and  interest, 
counting  not  the  cost,  for  the  sake  of  the  man 
whom  she  loves.  We  men  are  not  apt  to  be  so 
unselfish.  We  know  it  is  possible,  again,  for 
an  old  man  or  an  old  woman  to  re-live  life  in  the 
career  of  a  child.  It  is  pathetically  beautiful  to 
witness  the  way  in  which  this  is  done  around  us 
every  day.  The  old  live  again  unselfishly  in 
the  life  of  the  young.  Could  not  the  young  try 
it  as  unselfishly  in  the  life  of  the  world  ?  How 
shall  I  serve  my  God  if  I  serve  not  my  kind? 
And  there  is  a  Divine  principle  within  us  which 
urges  us  to  do  our  best  to  make  the  world  better 


AMBITION,  TRUE  AND  FALSE     121 

than  we  found  it.  I  have  often  been  struck 
with  the  fact  that  very  ordinary  people,  who 
make  very  small  profession  of  religion,  some- 
how will  do  this  at  some  part  of  their  career, 
in  some  one  of  their  interests.  They  feel  they 
must  even  at  a  cost  do  a  little  to  make  the 
world  gladder  and  to  make  the  world  good. 
Remember  the  utterance  of  the  Bishop  in  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  "  Les  Miserables."  As  the  convict 
stands  at  the  door  of  the  house,  proclaiming 
what  he  was  by  his  dress  and  his  demeanour, 
thus  spoke  the  servant  of  God — "  This  house  is 
not  my  house,  it  is  the  house  of  Jesus  Christ. 
This  door  does  not  demand  of  him  who  enters 
it  whether  he  has  a  name,  but  whether  he  has  a 
grief." 

Oh,  I  feel  that  if  our  bodies  were  made  the 
temples  of  the  Christ  as  the  Bishop's  house 
was  made  the  tabernacle  of  his  Lord;  if  our 
interests,  our  opportunities  were  consecrated  to 
Him,  oh,  what  a  difference,  majestic,  far-reach- 
ing, redemptive  it  would  make  to  the  world  to- 
morrow! And,  if  I  could,  I  would  like  to  fill 
every  young  soul  with  that  divine  ideal.  What 
can  we  do,  you  and  I,  to  bless  the  world  ?  Just 
what  these  noble  ones  in  times  past  have  done, 
the  Pauls  and  the  Luthers  and  the  Wesleys, — 
not  worldly  ambition,  but  the  consecrating  of 


122     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

evarything  they  possessed  to  their  Lord  and  the 
counting  all  but  loss  if  they  might  win  Him. 
Let  us  do  the  same  as  these.  "  Seekest  thou 
great  things  for  thyself?  Seek  them  not." 
Seekest  thou  great  things  for  God?  Go  on. 
Live  out  all  that  God  has  given  you  as  His 
trustee.  Seekest  thou  joy  and  blessedness  and 
victory  and  power  in  the  highest  sense  of  these 
words  ?  Would  you  come  to  the  full  stature  of 
your  manhood  ?  Then  "  seek  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these 
things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 


VII 

MORAL   RESPONSE   TO    SPIRIT- 
UAL VISION 


VII 

MORAL   RESPONSE   TO    SPIRIT- 
UAL VISION 

/  was  not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision.^ 
Acts  XXV i.  ig. 

THE  incident  described  in  the  twenty- 
sixth  chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apos- 
tles brings  us  into  direct  connection 
with  a  dramatic  moment  in  the  world's  history. 
Probably  few  of  those  whose  names  are  re- 
corded here  as  having  been  concerned  with  this 
episode,  if  any  of  them,  ever  dreamed  that  it 
would  be  spoken  of  again,  much  less  be  known 
to  millions  upon  millions  of  people,  and  do 
something  to  change  the  history  of  the  world. 
But  so  it  was.  I  have  often  thought  that  there 
could  be  no  much  better  subject  for  a  painter 
than  the  appearance  of  St.  Paul  before  Agrippa. 
Which  was  the  real  king  in  that  assembly,  the 
poor,  undersized,  hunch-backed  man  in  chains 
on  the  floor,  or  the  monarch  upon  the  exalted 
seat  with  the  governor  at  his  side  ?  The  world 
has  made  up  its  mind  now  as  to  which  was  the 
125 


126     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

majestic  figure.  It  was  that  of  the  austere, 
lonely,  meek-hearted  prophet.  So  convincing, 
so  eloquent,  was  his  simple  testimony  as  to  the 
change  that  had  passed  over  his  life,  and  the 
reason  for  it,  that  the  young  king  said,  and  I 
believe  said  in  all  sincerity,  "  Almost  thou  per- 
suadest  me  to  be  a  Christian.'^ 

Now,  mind  you,  the  word  Christian  then  had 
not  the  conventional  meaning  it  has  now.  Far 
from  it.  The  word  Christian  was  a  term  of 
reproach.  It  was  the  title  borne  by  an  obscure 
and  persecuted  sect,  and  this  Paul,  this  gentle- 
man, this  educated  Pharisee,  this  man  of  the 
established  religion,  had  made  himself  an  ou4:- 
cast  and  a  by-word  for  the  sake  of  this  new 
thing.  Here  he  stands  face  to  face  with  the 
king  and  the  Roman  governor,  and  tells  them  in 
the  hearing  of  an  unsympathetic  crowd  the 
reason  of  the  change  of  faith  and  for  his  new 
course  of  life;  and  when  by  the  simple  testi- 
mony, all-powerful  because  so  sincere  and  so 
simple,  he  wrings  from  the  king  himself  the 
generous  compliment,  or  something  more  than 
compliment,  the  wistful  testimony,  "  Almost 
thou  persuadest  me  to  be  a  Christian,''  his  reply 
15  equally  generous  and  nobler  far — "  I  would 
that  not  only  thou,  but  also  all  these  who  hear 
me  this  day,  were  almost  and  altogether  such 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    Ul 

as  I  am,  except  these  bonds."  Paul  knew  the 
value  of  his  profession.  He  had  seen  some- 
thing, he  knew  things  in  their  true  proportions, 
he  acted  in  consequence.  "  I  was  not  diso- 
bedient unto  the  heavenly  vision." 

My  intention,  I  may  as  well  state  at  the  out- 
set, is  to  make  an  appeal,  if  I  can,  in  the  name 
of  the  same  principle  and  of  the  same  great 
Master  Who  had  changed  Paul's  life.  In  a 
word,  I  am  going  to  try  what  I  can  do  as  an 
evangelist,  and  if  one's  purpose  is  thus  con- 
fessed at  the  outset,  I  trust  you  will  hear  with 
sympathy  what  I  have  to  advance. 

It  is  not  often  that  men  are  convinced  of  sin 
or  brought  face  to  face  with  God  in  any  star- 
tling or  dramatic  fashion  such  as  is  recorded 
here.  There  are  a  few  such  in  history,  but  only 
a  few.  St.  Augustine,  for  instance,  after  a 
youth  spent  in  debauchery,  and  as  the  result  of 
his  mother's  prayers,  changed  his  life.  The 
immediate  occasion  requires  some  explanation, 
and  I  do  not  know  that  any  has  ever  been  forth- 
coming. The  saint  that  was  to  be,  great 
thinker  and  mighty  force  in  the  world  for 
Christ — none  greater  unless  it  be  Paul  himself 
— was  walking  in  his  garden,  when  it  seemed 
as  though  he  heard  a  voice  from  heaven  saying, 
"  Take  and  read,  take  and  read."    And  what 


128     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

he  took  and  what  he  read  was  simply  the  story 

of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  through  that  Pauhne 

experience  Augustine  came  from  darkness  into 

Hght,  from  bestial  sensuality  into  the  purity  of 

the  saints  of  God. 

Another  and  different  experience — perhaps 

not  so  very  different — was  that  of  St.  Francis 

of  Assisi.     You  are  familiar  with  the  vision 

that  he  saw  on  the  heights  above  his  home  in 

the  night-watches,  which  changed  the  careless, 

pleasure-loving,  though  brave-hearted,  humble 

youth  to  the  great  saint  of  God  and  teacher  of 

truth  that  he  afterwards  became.    He  saw,  and 

was  not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision. 

In  humbler  circumstances  and  in  modern  times 

men  have  seen  or  men  have  heard  visions  and 

voices   without  or  within  themselves   calling 

them  to  the  service  of  God,  like  that  Moravian 

missionary  whose  experience  has  been  put  into 

these  words : 

"  I  hear  a  voice  you  cannot  hear 
Which  bids  me  not  to  stay  ; 
I  see  a  hand  you  cannot  see 
Which  beckons  me  away." 

But  mostly  such  experiences  as  these,  when 
they  have  come,  have  been  experiences  calling 
men  to  exceptional  service,  and  they  are  few 
and  far  between.    No  man  ever  received  one 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    129 

such  experience  as  a  special  privilege,  to  con- 
vince him  of  this  truth  or  of  that.  He  received 
it  as  a  call  to  great  and  to  arduous  service. 
And  such  it  was  to  St.  Paul.  "  I  will  show 
him  how  great  things  he  must  suffer  for  My 
name's  sake." 

But  more  frequently  there  is  no  outward 
vision  at  all.  Hardly  any  of  us  can  remember 
anything  very  startling  the  first  time  that  we 
were  inclined  to  decision  for  God,  and  there 
are  not  a  few  in  this  place  to-night  who  feel 
that  Christ  is  the  centre  and  circumference  of 
their  lives.  You  came,  but  not  through  any- 
thing startling,  and  not  through  an3rthing  dra- 
matic. It  is  of  the  essence  of  moral  change 
that  it  should  be  in  the  midst  of  normal  condi- 
tions. If  your  life  is  changed  without  signifi- 
cance to  the  world  that  lies  without,  I  mean 
without  any  obvious  significance  to  the  larger 
world  that  lies  without,  it  is  all  but  imperative 
that  it  should  have  been  changed  by  solemnly 
and  quietly  facing  the  ordinary  facts  of  ordi- 
nary life.  God  will  not  visit  you  with  His 
lightnings,  God  will  not  come  to  you  in  some 
amazing  supernatural  fashion.  He  will  come 
to  you,  it  may  be,  in  the  *'  still  small  voice," 
and  not  through  '*  the  earthquake,  wind,  and 
fire." 


130     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

Sometimes  I  have  heard  young  people,  yes, 
and  older  people,  too,  ask  a  question  of  this 
kind — "  Why  does  God  not  show  us  plainly 
what  is  the  truth  about  everlasting  life  ?  Here 
we  are  left  to  puzzle  and  stumble  without 
knowing  for  certain  just  what  things  are  and 
how  they  are.  This  man  teaches  that  aspect  of 
truth,  and  yonder  man  another,  but  how  are 
we  to  know  just  what  is  the  truth?  Why  are 
we  not  more  plainly  shown  ?  " 

Well,  I  will  tell  you,  and  I  think  you  will 
agree  with  me,  the  answer  is  irrefutable.  It  is 
because  there  is  no  room  for  doubt  upon  the 
things  that  are  imperative  on  heart  and  con- 
science. Conduct,  to  be  truly  heroic,  must  be 
lived  in  the  midst  of  mystery.  If  you  knew  as 
certainly  as  two  and  two  make  four  that  it  would 
always  pay  you  to  do  right,  there  would  be 
no  cost  in  the  right  and  no  nobleness  to  be  won. 
God  has  left  a  good  many  things  in  doubt,  but 
there  is  one  thing  He  has  left  us  in  no  doubt 
about  at  all,  and  that  is,  if  you  will  permit  the 
truism,  that  it  is  right  to  do  right,  it  is  wrong 
to  do  wrong.  He  has  given  us  each  a  highest 
to  see,  and  to  follow  the  highest  leads  us  into 
ever-expanding  vision  of  truth.  John  Henry 
Newman  wrote  at  the  great  crisis  in  his  own 
life: 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    131 

"  Keep  Thou  my  feet;  I  do  not  ask  to  see 
The  distant  scene;  one  step  enough  for  me." 

No,  we  need  not  look  for  the  abnormal,  nor  is 
it  right  that  we  should,  in  our  spiritual  crises, 
but  there  is  no  man  here  who  has  not  seen 
some  heavenly  vision.  Notwithstanding"  all 
that  I  have  said,  that  vision  is  peculiarly  your 
own,  as  much  so  as  was  St.  Paul's  on  the  road 
to  Damascus.  The  question  is,  what  response 
you  have  made  to  your  vision.  For  instance, 
there  are  hundreds,  it  may  be  we  get  into 
thousands,  of  people  here,  who  have  or  have 
had  such  tender  and  winsome  associations 
round  about  them  in  their  early  life  that  they 
will  never  forget  them,  they  will  never  belittle 
them,  and  they  will  see  increasingly  more  and 
more  of  beauty  and  grandeur  therein.  A  man 
brought  up  in  a  good  home,  with  a  childhood 
round  about  which  there  was  an  atmosphere  of 
tenderness  and  truth,  and  humble  but  real  af- 
fection— you  have  gone  a  long  way  since  then, 
it  may  be,  and  you  have  taken  a  wild  way,  but 
as  you  look  back,  man  of  the  world  though  you 
may  be,  you  see  with  increasing  susceptibility 
and  increasing  readiness  to  acknowledge  that 
fact,  that  there  was  a  beauty  you  did  not  see 
at  the  time  in  that  home  of  your  childhood's 
days.     You  never  saw  how  noble  nor  how 


132     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

grand  was  your  father's  life,  it  may  be,  nor 
how  sweet  and  how  winsome  were  your 
mother's  prayers.  At  the  time  you  failed  to 
see  these  things,  but  as  years  roll  on  you  see 
them  more  and  more.  You  were  surrounded 
by  wonderful  things.  There  is  no  novel  half 
so  rich  in  descriptive  experience  as  could  be 
written  out  of  the  lives  of  the  ordinary  people 
here.  I  find  that  times  and  again  when  one 
comes  to  know  people  one  is  addressing.  You 
never  knew,  it  may  be,  what  your  home  was 
until  you  left  it,  you  never  knew  what  the 
goodness  of  a  loved  one  was  till  he  was  gone. 
It  may  be  you  played  the  traitor  to  it  all ;  some 
of  you  indeed — and  this  is  an  increasing  per- 
plexity to  me  the  older  I  get — have  treated  the 
nearest  and  the  dearest  and  the  ones  to  whom 
you  owed  the  most  in  such  a  fashion  that  to 
your  worst  enemy  you  could  not  have  been 
more  cruel.  You  know  what  I  mean.  A  man 
may  love  his  own  and  yet  break  their  hearts. 
A  man  may  be  obtuse  and  blind  to  the  gracious 
and  wonderful  and  radiantly  beautiful  heavenly 
things  that  to  him  are  only  commonplace  when 
he  is  in  their  midst.  You  may  have  repaid  with 
pain  and  agony  the  love  and  affection  that  was 
showered  upon  you.  If  so,  you  do  not  need  any 
preacher  to  hurt  you  by  reminding  you  of  it. 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    133 

A  member  of  the  family  of  the  late  John 
Bright  once  gave  me  a  poem  which  I  was  told 
was  a  favourite  with  the  great  statesman 
and  man  of  the  people.  I  can  only  remember 
a  few  lines  of  it,  but  these  were  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  whole.  It  was  the  sad  song 
of  a  husband  who  had  not  seen  what  God  had 
given  him  in  the  noble  wife  until  she  was  gone, 
and  thus  he  sighs : 

"  My  burden  then  I  did  not  see 
Dropped  from  my  shoulder,  borne  by  thee."    ^ 

The  last  lines  of  all, 

'•  The  hand  of  death  gave  rest  to  thee,  t 

And,  wondrous  thing,  gave  sight  to  me. "     Vs 

Yet  the  point  of  what  I  am  telling  you  is  this 
— he  might  have  seen  before.  If  God  would 
only  give  us  to  see  more  plainly  the  beautiful 
things  that  are  to  be  seen  when  we  are  face  to 
face  with  them !  But  we  are  disobedient  often 
and  often  to  the  heavenly  vision. 

There  is  another  thing  I  would  like  to  say ; 
I  think  it  is  of  more  importance  still.  There 
are  many  of  us  who  do  not  see  the  value  of  in- 
nocence. Here  I  speak  no  word  of  rebuke,  but 
a  word  of  warning.  The  people  to  whom  I 
address  myself  are  the  young.  Experience  is 
always  dearly  bought.    Ask  these  grey-headed 


134     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

men.  Yet  in  youth  the  vision  of  nobleness  is 
there,  plain  to  see.  It  is  only  that  you  will  not 
let  your  eyes  rest  upon  it  long  enough.  There 
is  a  fascination  about  the  forbidden  fruit.  Be- 
lieve me,  there  are  sights  that  some  of  these 
young  people,  brought  up  in  good  homes  and 
hitherto  having  lived  good  lives,  had  better 
never  see.  I  know  you  are  always  wanting  to 
see  them.  Better  let  them  alone.  Seeing  life, 
as  they  call  it,  is  often  a  synonym  for  seeing 
hell.  You  may  drink  the  cup  of  pleasure  to  the 
dregs,  and  then  find  that  you  have  another  to 
quaff,  the  cup  of  remorse,  and  I  know  of  no 
antidote  to  that.  After  a  recent  sermon  I  re- 
ceived a  letter  which  contained  this  sentence : 
*'  If  some  one  had  talked  to  me  when  I  was  a 
youth  as  plainly,  as  faithfully,  as  unmistakably 
as  you  spoke  to  your  young  men,  I  would  be  a 
different  man  to-day  and  have  a  different 
record  and  a  gladder  heart."  Well  now,  I  am 
speaking  again,  this  time  a  word  of  warning. 
Have  no  foul  and  festering  secrets  in  your  life, 
no  dark,  ugly  corners  that  will  not  bear  the 
light.  See  what  is  beautiful,  see  it  now,  and 
never  turn  your  gaze  away. 

For  God  has  given  you  that  vision.  It  is 
Divine,  as  much  as  Augustine's  that  came  in 
the  garden  after  his  evil  life  had  been  lived. 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    135 

You  need  not  have  the  regrets  that  the  great 
saint  had.  God  need  not  snatch  you  from  the 
burning  fiery  furnace  of  self-contempt  and  self- 
despair.  Do  not  go  into  it.  A  heavenly  vision 
has  been  granted — be  true  to  it. 

You  remember,  some  of  you,  the  publication 
some  years  ago  of  a  remarkable  psychological 
novel,  "  The  Silence  of  Dean  Maitland."  The 
central  character  of  that  story  is  a  refined, 
clever  Church  of  England  clergyman,  rising 
to  be  a  high  dignitary  in  his  own  communion. 
But  in  his  youth,  first  through  vanity,  and 
then  through  something  darker,  he  came  to  be 
a  seducer  and  a  murderer — ugly  words,  he 
dare  not  face  them  himself.  His  excuse  al- 
ways to  himself  was  this,  "  You  know  I  never 
meant  it."  Of  course  he  did  not.  No  sinner 
ever  does  mean  the  consequences,  he  only 
means  the  sin.  He  never  was  punished  so 
far  as  this  world  was  concerned,  no,  not  in 
the  dramatic  finale,  but  he  carried  within  his 
bosom  all  the  long  years  of  his  guilty  life  a 
serpent  that  gnawed  at  his  vitals.  Who  would 
have  changed  places  with  this  man  for  all  his 
position  and  all  his  success  ?  "  Keep  inno- 
cency  "  he  once  preached,  in  the  best  sermon  he 
ever  uttered.  "  Keep  innocency.  Only  so  shall 
a  man  have  peace  at  the  last." 


136     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

And  I  tell  you  in  the  name  of  God  that  there 
is  no  position  that  you  will  ever  obtain  in  this 
world  that  can  compensate  you  for  a  guilty  con- 
science. Keep  to  what  you  have  now.  Keep 
clean,  keep  good.  It  is  a  simple  word,  but  it  is 
a  right  one.  Keep  as  near  to  the  Christ  as  ever 
a  good  father  or  a  wise  mother  took  you.  Keep 
your  eyes  fixed  upon  the  vision  that  God  has 
given  you.  Otherwise,  on  the  other  side  of 
sin  you  have  a  discovery  to  make,  a  discovery 
that  everybody  makes,  that  no  sin  is  worth  the 
price  that  is  paid  for  it.  We  have  before  now 
in  each  other's  company  called  up  the  figure  of 
Queen  Guinevere,  Tennyson's  creation,  true  to 
the  life,  and  her  wail  of  self-reproach  as  the 
king,  her  husband,  left  her.  And  Arthur,  you 
know,  is  the  prototype  of  Christ,  Tennyson's 
Christ.    Said  the  guilty  queen : 

"  It  was  my  duty  to  have  loved  the  highest: 
It  surely  was  my  profit,  had  I  known: 
It  would  have  been  my  pleasure,  had  I  seen. 
We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it. 
Not  Lancelot,  nor  another." 

There  is  the  vision  I  have  set  before  you 
now.  The  highest  you  have  seen.  God  sends 
it.  No  man  can  make  excuse  that  he  has  not 
seen  it.  The  Christ  of  Galilee,  of  Calvary,  of 
Glory  is  ever  one  and  the  same,  and  this  is 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    137 

the  Being  who   changed   Paul's   hfe,   and  to 
that  Christ  I  call  you.     This  is  the  heavenly 
vision.     "  Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people 
perish."     Behold,    this    same   Jesus — a    won- 
drous thought,  but  I  am  convinced  it  is  true, 
that  the  Jesus  Who  spoke  to  Paul  on  the  high- 
way to  Damascus  is  speaking  in  this  great  as- 
sembly to-night,  to  you  and  me,  to  all  and  to 
each.     Sometimes,  when  we  really  get  hold  of 
that   thought   it   becomes   awful,    as   well   as 
blessed,  in  its  majesty  and  its  power.     See  the 
Christ,  His  goodness.  His  beauty,  His  love, 
His  cross^ — that  is  what  Paul  saw,  and  he  was 
not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision;  and  as 
a  dear  old  saint  who  lived  in  a  corner  once  de- 
clared, "  I  had  rather  be  in  hell  with  the  Christ 
than  in  heaven  with  His  murderers."    And  so 
would  you.     I  am  certain  that  the  cry  of  every 
heart  would  be,  if  it  came  to  close  quarters  be- 
tween Christ  and  the  personification  of  evil, 
"  Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that  was  slain,"  even  if 
He  had  remained  slain.     Better  a  Christ  that 
was  defeated  than  a  Pilate  that  won.    But  then 
the  Christ  was  not  defeated,  and  Pilate  lost, 
and  to  the  Paul  that  stood  before  Agrippa  the 
person  of  Christ  was  the  Master  that  day,  and 
the  Conqueror  over  death  and  hell. 

You  and  I  are  called  to  participate  in  a 


138     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

victory  like  this.  We  see  quite  plainly  what  is 
at  stake.  We  are  to  choose  between  the  Christ 
and  the  powers  of  darkness.  Think  of  what 
the  Christ  means  to  the  world  and  shall  mean. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  cant  talked  about  His 
followers  to-day.  I  would  warn  you  against 
it  when  you  come  face  to  face  with  the  vision 
of  Christ.  There  is  a  cant  of  this  world  as 
well  as  a  cant  of  religion,  and  plenty  of  it. 

It  is  not  my  custom  to  make  any  reply,  or 
even  any  reference,  to  aspersions  on  myself  and 
my  work.  One  has  something  else  to  do. 
But  it  happened  only  yesterday  that  my  eyes 
fell  for  the  first  time  on  one  criticism  that 
has  been  directed  against  myself  and  the  City 
Temple,  and  the  occasion  was  that  I  was  asked 
to  review  a  book  by  a  friend  of  mine,  Mr. 
Frank  Ballard.  I  found  that  Mr.  Ballard  was 
replying,  on  my  behalf,  to  something  that  had 
been  said  by  the  editor  of  a  certain  paper 
against  religion  in  general  and  this  Church  in 
particular.  Why  they  should  ever  take  the 
trouble  to  reply  to  the  criticisms,  the  puerili- 
ties, that  are  directed  against  Christianity  and 
against  the  followers  of  the  risen  Lord  I  do 
not  know.  But  if  anybody  can  do  It  well,  it 
is  Mr.  Ballard.  Here  is  the  criticism :  "  Seven 
thousand   pounds   spent   in   making  grand   a 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    139 

place  where  people  meet  to  sing  and  pray, 
while  a  woman's  soul  can  be  bought  outside 
the  door  for  a  few  shillings."  That  was  cant, 
you  know,  pure  cant.  I  will  tell  you  what 
cant  is.  Cant  is  the  profession  of  a  belief  and 
practice  to  which  the  life  is  not  conformed.  If  \ 
that  is  made  by  a  religious  man,  he  is  a  hypo-  ^ 
crite,  he  is  guilty  of  cant.  If  it  is  made  by  a 
man  of  the  world,  he  is  equally  guilty  of  just 
the  same  thing.  Mr.  Ballard's  reply  was 
crushing:  "Admitted.  If  a  woman's  soul  is 
sold  outside  the  City  Temple  for  a  few  shil- 
lings, the  purchaser  is  not  a  worshipper."  Our 
business  here  is  to  fight  that  traffic.  We  may 
not  be  doing  much  we  ought,  perhaps  some  of 
us  take  it  too  lightly  and  too  easily,  but  at  any 
rate  we  are  trying  to  do  something,  and  as  Mr. 
Ballard  said  in  two  lines  more,  "  What  are  the 
critics  of  the  Churches  and  of  the  followers  of 
Christ  doing  in  their  place  to  stem  the  torrent  of 
evil?  Nothing  but  talk,  nothing  but  talk." 
And,  young  men,  my  whole  purpose  in  putting 
that  circumstance  before  you  now  is  to  make 
you  see  with  perfect  clearness  the  choice  be- 
tween the  higher  and  the  lower.  You  will  be 
tempted  to-morrow  mornings  when  somebody 
chooses  to  rail  against  what  you  have  heard 
to-night,  to  join  in  with  them  and  say,  "  Look 


\ 


140     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

at  the  practices  of  these  so-called  Christians." 
Do  you  not  see  what  you  are  doing?  In  the 
very  moment  that  you  condemn  the  practice, 
you  exalt  the  Christ,  for  you  tell  us  what  we 
ought  to  be,  which  is  the  same  thing  as  telling 
us  what  Christ  is. 

No  more  cant.  You  and  I  are  face  to  face 
with  Christ.  You  may  be  a  man  of  the  world 
and  I  may  be  a  Christian,  and  we  may  both 
talk  cant.  But  there  is  the  vision.  No  one 
can  pull  Him  down  from  His  eminence,  "  Jesus 
Christ,  the  same  yesterday  and  to-day  and  for 
ever."  Not  all  the  righteous  influences  of  the 
world,  put  together,  can  come  anywhere  near  to 
what  the  Christ  has  writ  upon  the  hearts  and 
lives  of  men.  There  is  the  vision,  the  vision 
Paul  saw  and  gave  his  life  for.  I  want  yours 
for  it.  You  see  the  truth,  rise  to  it.  Trust 
your  own  highest,  for  that  too  is  Christ  and 
the  Spirit  of  God  witnessing  within  you. 
"  No,"  you  say,  "  I  cannot  see,  it  is  not  true, 
I  cannot  be  sure  of  the  Christ."  Well,  I  will 
tell  you  what  I  would  do  if  I  were  you — I 
would  trust  that  in  you  by  which  you  see  Him 
now, 

"  Can  time  undo  what  once  was  true  ?" 

It  made  a  hero  out  of  an  austere  Pharisee.    He 


RESPONSE  TO  SPIRITUAL  VISION    141 

was  not  disobedient  unto  the  call  of  the  Cruci- 
fied. There  is  something  here  in  every  man  by 
which  he  sees  a  higher  than  he  will  ever  live 
up  to  in  this  world.  Let  me  illustrate  what  I 
mean.  Mr.  Hawkins  has  shut  up  his  organ 
now.  You  cannot  hear  a  note.  Do  you  know 
what  music  is?  It  is  a  Divine  message  that 
comes  simply  through  the  vibration  of  air 
waves.  Only  that,  and  there  is  some  music  in 
either  end  of  the  scale  that  you  cannot  hear, 
your  ear  will  not  take  it.  But  where  the  ear 
leaves  off,  something  else  begins.  Do  you 
know  what  note  that  flower  is  singing?  I  can- 
not hear,  but  I  can  see.  I  see  the  sound  of 
that  daisy,  I  hear  the  music  of  that  daffodil 
with  my  eye. 

Now,  young  men,  you  can  hear  no  heavenly 
music.  We  are  shut  in,  and  we  are  shut  down 
to  the  range  of  common  things,  though  heaven 
perhaps  lies  about  us.  But  I  can  see  the  Christ 
who  makes  heaven,  and  having  seen  Him,  fol- 
low to  the  end.  Suppose  the  worst,  if  you  like. 
Suppose  the  Christ  crumbling  to  dust  in  Gali- 
lee, suppose  the  tomb  to  be  the  end  not  only  of 
His  gospel,  but  of  you  and  me.  Supposing 
that,  it  were  better  for  you,  once  having  seen 
the  Highest,  to  stay  there  and  keep  true  to  it, 
better  to  be  deluded  with  Christ  than  wise  with 


14^     THE  CHOICE  OP  THE  HIGHEST 

His  detractors.  Be  true  to  the  best  you  can 
see,  and  better  will  come  for  you.  **  Be  not 
disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision." 

♦'  Whoso  hath  felt  the  Spirit  of  the  Highest, 
Cannot  confound  nor  doubt  Him,  nor  deny; 
Yea,  with  one  voice,  O  world,  though  thou  deniest, 
Stand  thou  on  that  side,  for  on  this  am  I." 


VIII 

THE   STRUGGLE  WITH   TEMP- 
TATION 


VIII 

THE   STRUGGLE   WITH    TEMP- 
TATION 

Blessed  is  the  man  that  endureth  temptation.— James 
i.  12, 

THIS  is  a  strange  chapter.  The  whole 
book  is  remarkable.  Luther  called  it 
an  epistle  of  straw,  but  I  think  he  had 
the  wrong  perspective.  This  chapter  abounds 
in  sayings  which  contradict  each  other  if  we 
measure  them  by  the  rules  of  barren,  inade- 
quate logic.  Some  things  are  higher  than 
logic;  most  truths  that  are  worth  enunciating 
contain  some  element  of  paradox.  This  chap- 
ter contains  paradoxes  and  even  antinomies. 
Particularly  is  that  the  case  with  the  part  of  it 
immediately  concerned  with  our  subject.  Com- 
pare :  ''  My  brethren,  count  it  all  joy  when  ye 
fall  into  divers  temptations  "  with  "  Every  man 
is  tempted  when  he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own 
lust,  and  enticed."  "  Blessed  is  the  man  that 
endureth  temptation,  for  when  he  is  tried  " — 
that  is,  when  he  is  approved — ''  he  shall  receive 
145 


146     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

a  crown  of  life."  Read  along  with  that:  "  Let 
no  man  say,  when  he  is  tempted,  I  am  tempted 
of  God;  for  God  cannot  be  tempted  with  evil, 
neither  tempteth  He  any  man."  If  these  sen- 
tences do  not  contradict  each  other  as  they 
stand,  apparently  they  come  very  near  to  it. 

St.  James  did  not  write  at  random,  and  the 
explanation  is  to  be  found  in  this  fact.  In 
this  chapter  "  temptation  "  is  used  to  express 
two  allied  but  distinct  ideas.  The  original 
means  trial,  sorrow,  discipline,  pain;  anything 
is  temptation  by  which  you  are  compelled  to 
suffer.  It  would  be  useless  to  say  that  such 
temptation  is  not  sent  of  God;  we  know  that  it 
is.  "  Man  is  born  to  trouble  as  the  sparks  fly 
upward."  There  is  no  manhood  without 
struggle.  Even  when  we  are  passive,  and  are 
being  wrought  upon,  rather  than  ourselves 
reacting  upon  life,  pain  is  God's  instrument 
employed  by  Him,  the  instrument  of  His  de- 
liberate choice,  for  the  making  of  manhood. 
In  that  sense  we  are  tempted  of  God,  and  the 
apostle  does  not  mean  to  suggest  anything 
else.  It  is  of  this  kind  of  temptation  he  speaks 
when  he  says :  "  Count  it  all  joy  when  ye  fall 
into  divers  temptations,"  trials,  disciplines, 
pains,  "  knowing  this,  that  the  trying  of  your 
faith  worketh  patience.    But  let  patience  have 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION      147 

her  perfect  work,  that  ye  may  be  perfect  and 
entire,   wanting  nothing." 

The  second  meaning,  however,  is  that  with 
which  the  word  is  more  commonly  associated 
in  the  EngHsh  tongue.  By  temptation  is  popu- 
larly understood  solicitation  towards  evil,  a 
drawing  downwards.  In  that  sense  it  never 
can  be  true  that  God  tempts  men.  But  is  it 
not  true  that  God  makes  the  crisis  in  which  our 
choice  of  the  higher  is  possible  only  at  the 
risk  of  our  falling  into  the  lower?  What  is 
sin  but  following  the  lower  in  the  presence  of 
the  higher,  doing  that  which  is  easy  in  opposi- 
tion to  that  which  is  right?  There  is  a  moral 
test  involved  in  every  crisis  in  which  we  de- 
liberately choose  the  higher.  The  lower  stands 
before  you  too;  it  is  possible  for  you  to  give 
your  adherence  to  the  lower,  but  God  is  not 
tempting  you  downward.  He  is  calling  you 
upward,  and  every  crisis  in  which  you  are 
called  upon  to  choose  the  higher  in  the  presence 
of  the  lower  is  God's  opportunity  for  you,  and 
it  is  His  summons  to  your  manhood — come  up 
higher. 

We  are  all  the  time  in  the  region  of  such 
temptation;  no  matter  how  strong  we  seem  to 
be,  we  have  to  struggle  with  the  lower  self 
and  with  the  assaults  which  reach  that  lower 


148     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

self  from  without.  The  citadel  of  our  being  is 
never  impregnable.  There  is  an  enemy  inside 
who,  if  not  watched,  would  unbar  the  door. 
Every  man  has  his  own  weaknesses  and  is  aware 
of  them,  though  he  may  not  like  to  be  told 
of  them,  and  each  is  in  danger  of  moral  over- 
throw. There  is  a  crisis  in  every  lot,  perhaps 
in  every  day :  "  Let  him  that  thinketh  he 
standeth  take  heed  lest  he  fall."  What  over- 
whelming surprises  we  sometimes  get  when 
some  one  of  our  friends  suddenly  goes  wrong, 
or  an  acquaintance  to  whom  we  have  been  ac- 
customed to  look  up  falsifies  the  opinion  of 
his  circle,  and  appears  to  have  been  living  a 
hypocritical  life.  The  latter  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow.  It  may  simply  mean  that  the 
enemy  from  inside  has  unbarred  the  door ;  and 
in  one  weak  place  the  man  was  vulnerable  and 
was  overthrown.  If  we  are  wise  every  one 
of  us  will  say,  without  calling  names  to  the 
man  who  has  gone  down,  "  But  for  the  grace 
of  God  there  go  I." 

Let  us  survey  some  of  the  commoner  forms 
of  temptation  to  which  you  and  I  have  been  ex- 
posed, or  probably  will  be.  I  place  in  the  fore- 
ground those  peculiar  to  youth  and  hot  blood. 
The  less  these  are  dwelt  upon  in  public  perhaps 
the  better,  but  they  ought  never  to  be  entirely 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     149 

ignored.  It  must  seem  to  young-  men,  who  are 
trying  to  live  a  right  Hfe  and  keep  their 
thought  and  actions  pure,  that  the  sexual  in- 
stincts are  far  too  strong;  the  angel  and  the 
beast  are  very  near  together.  What  a  humilia- 
tion it  is  that  you  have  to  fight  a  battle  with 
the  flesh  at  all ;  but  saints  and  heroes  the  wide 
world  over,  and  all  history  through,  have  had 
that  same  battle  to  fight.  It  is  a  most  arresting 
fact  that  oftentimes  the  finest  temperaments, 
those  belonging  to  the  highest  order  of  genius, 
have  been  subjected  to  that  particular  conflict, 
and  there  is  a  danger  in  it  through  the  very 
loss  of  self-respect  which  is  involved  in  failure. 
There  is  no  deadlier  temptation  than  that  which 
comes  in  the  wake  of  the  battle  with  the  flesh 
that  has  been  lost.  There  are  many  things  to 
discourage  a  man  in  entering  upon  a  conflict 
with  the  flesh.  One  is  that  he  knows  perfectly 
well  that  a  victory  gained  to-day  secures  him 
no  immunity  to-morrow.  The  tone  of  the  so- 
ciety in  which  you  move  does  so  much  to  make 
the  conflict  worse,  and  many  young  fellows,  I 
verily  believe,  are  held  back  from  a  public  pro- 
fession of  Christ  by  the  thought  that  they  have 
this  conflict  in  secret,  and  they  do  not  like  to 
take  any  profession  upon  them  which  would 
seem  even  to  themselves  to  involve  something 


150     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

that  looks  like  hypocrisy.  You  are  never  to 
blame  merely  for  being  tempted;  you  may  be 
to  blame  for  going  where  temptation  is,  for 
giving  harbourage  to  evil  suggestions,  for 
dwelling  in  thought  upon  that  which  is  im- 
pure. But  the  mere  fact  of  temptation  you  are 
not  responsible  for,  and  this  is  why  the  apos- 
tolic writer  says,  "  Blessed  are  you  in  that  you 
are  able  to  meet  and  endure  temptation,  if  you 
come  off  victor." 

Let  us  survey  some  other  forms  of  tempta- 
tion not  of  this  specific  kind,  and  yet  allied  to 
it  in  that  they  are  incidental  to  our  social  life. 
There  is  the  temptation  of  the  wine-cup.  Is 
anything  more  deadly  to  our  national  well- 
being  than  that?  Again,  I  may  mention  haz- 
ards of  the  gaming-table,  of  which  we  are 
hearing  so  much  just  now.  I  have  heard  it 
said  that  England  is  corrupt  at  two  ends,  the 
highest  and  the  lowest  grades  of  society.  I 
am  not  well  informed  enough  to  say  whether 
that  is  entirely  true;  but  I  know  that  right- 
thinking  people,  serious-minded  men,  are 
afraid  for  their  country's  future  because  of 
those  twin  demons,  drink  and  gambling. 
This  triad — drink,  gambling,  immorality — lie 
very  close  together,  and  walk  hand-in-hand. 
Besides  these,  there  is  the  lowering  of  moral 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     151 

tone  that  sometimes  comes  as  the  effect  of  the 
company  you  keep.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact 
that  the  general  tone  of  a  certain  company 
may  fall  below  the  habitual  level  of  any  man 
in  it.  It  seems  as  though  we  descend  to  meet. 
We  are  ashamed  of  seeming  at  our  best  in  the 
presence  of  our  fellows,  and,  in  our  shrinking 
from  Pharisaism,  we  go  to  an  unworthy 
extreme.  Then  there  is  the  craving  for  new 
pleasure,  and  one  sinister  feature  of  our  modern 
civilisation  is  the  countless  opportunities  it  pro- 
vides for  self-indulgence.  It  is  not  always 
easy  to  say  just  where  the  harm  comes  in ;  per- 
haps this  is  the  point :  anything  which  is  in 
danger  of  acquiring  the  mastery  over  our  man- 
hood is  an  enemy  to  be  wrestled  with.  It  does 
not  matter  much  what  it  is,  any  idea  which 
tends  to  create  a  monopoly  of  your  interests 
and  pursuits  is  an  enemy.  Watch!  If  it  be 
love  of  money,  be  careful.  If  for  money's  own 
sake  you  are  willing  to  do  more  than  for  al- 
most anything  else,  and  if  your  thoughts  are 
employed  in  planning  so  to  do,  beware !  you  are 
in  danger,  simply  because  you  cannot  hold 
loosely  that  which  in  itself  is  not  wrong.  Any 
idea,  I  care  not  much  what  it  is,  if  it  is  a  par- 
ticular form  of  pleasure,  watch  it,  take  care  that 
you  are  master ;  for  so  soon  as  an  ignoble  idea 


152     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

acquires  dominance  in  a  man's  mind  his  char- 
acter begins  to  suffer.  Oftentimes,  when  social 
pleasures  upset  character,  we  are  grieved  that 
it  is  not  the  cold-hearted  and  calculating  who 
go  under,  but  the  jolly  good  fellows,  as  they 
are  called.  But  jolly  good  fellows  can  do  much 
mischief  to  themselves  and  to  others.  By  his 
very  weakness  the  man  who  is  easily  led  is  a 
menace  to  the  circle  in  which  he  moves. 

There  is  an  order  of  temptation  incidental 
to  your  vocation.  The  more  earnest  you  are 
about  your  business  or  profession,  the  greater 
becomes  your  liability  to  this  special  form  of 
temptation;  the  pursuit  grips  you,  holds  you 
tight.  The  dangerous  point  in  many  careers  is 
not  early  manhood,  but  middle  life.  When  a 
man  has  outlived  his  illusions,  generous  senti- 
ments, early  love,  when  ambition  begins  to  take 
the  place  of  sentimental  affection,  then  is  the 
dangerous  time.  Then  a  man  wants  to  fight  the 
world  with  the  world's  weapons,  to  take  short 
cuts  to  success.  The  craze  to  be  rich  is  re- 
sponsible for  many  temptations.  Take  the 
"  Liberator  "  crash.  Some  of  you  may  be  feel- 
ing very  bitter  about  the  change  in  3^our  for- 
tunes that  took  place  as  the  result  of  that  over- 
whelming catastrophe;  but  I  am  credibly  in- 
formed by  financial  men  that  those  who  were 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     153 

punished  in  connection  with  that  disaster  were 
not  common  swindlers,  and  never  intended  to 
be.  What  they  did  intend  was  a  magnificent 
coup,  the  shuffling  of  figures,  the  stretching  out 
of  the  hand  to  do  a  big  thing,  and  do  it  quickly. 
The  attempt  failed;  in  other  cases  it  has  suc- 
ceeded. We  send  one  man  to  gaol  for  financial 
jugglery,  we  put  up  a  statue  to  another.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  are  all  in  danger  of  this  par- 
ticular form  of  temptation.  Life  becomes 
more  strenuous  as  you  get  to  know  more  about 
it,  as  you  measure  your  strength  against  the 
world.  There  is  a  subtle,  insidious,  most  dan- 
gerous form  of  temptation,  to  achieve  success 
quickly  by  some  dodge  or  device,  instead  of 
replying  upon  the  strenuous,  manly  qualities 
with  which  we  are  all  endowed.  Blessed  is 
the  man  who  can  pass  that  danger-point  suc- 
cessfully, keeping  his  manhood  intact  and 
pure. 

Some  may  be  saying.  This  is  all  true,  you 
are  pointing  out  what  we  have  already  been 
thinking;  but  what  do  you  recommend  us  to 
do  ?  I  ask  you,  in  the  first  place,  to  remember 
that  it  is  not  a  bad  but  a  good  thing  that  you 
have  to  meet  temptation,  and  that  you  have  to 
meet  it  every  day.  It  is  your  manhood's  op- 
portunity.   You  are  not  solicited  to  evil  by  Al- 


154     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

mighty  God,  but  by  the  very  presentation  of 
the  choice,  as  I  have  already  said,  God  is  call- 
ing you  to  ascend.  Remember  also  that  every 
evil  desire  is  the  perversion  of  a  good  one,  and 
the  good  is  present  all  the  time  and  every  time 
with  the  evil.  You  never  were  asked  yet  to  do 
a  thing  that  you  knew  to  be  wrong,  but  that  at 
the  same  moment  the  good  was  making  itself 
heard  too;  and  it  just  depends  upon  which 
choice  you  make  what  kind  of  manhood  you 
grow.  Let  no  man  say  when  he  is  tempted,  I 
am  tempted  downwards  by  the  will  of  God. 
When  you  are  tempted,  say,  I  am  summoned 
upward  by  the  love  of  God.  It  is  ours  to 
destroy  the  evil  by  choosing  the  good,  to  fight 
the  lower  by  rising  to  the  higher. 

Now  to  return  to  the  solicitation  of  the  first 
kind  of  temptation  I  mentioned — that  asso- 
ciated with  lust  or  sensuality.  Are  you  aware, 
young  men,  that  the  very  fire  and  energy  which 
tends  to  your  ruin  in  this  respect  is  the  mark 
of  your  manhood?  Be  thankful  to  God  for 
the  impulses  which  would  destroy  you  if  you 
give  them  rein;  for  they  will  carry  you  up- 
ward if  you  are  master  of  them,  instead  of  them 
master  of  you.  Your  manhood  is  worth  very 
little  unless  you  dO'  feel  this  fire  and  energy 
burning   within   you;   it   is   your   source   of 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     155 

power,  it  is  Divine  if  divinely  used;  fling  it 
upon  the  highest  things  and  trust  to  the  God 
Who  gave  you  this  instinct  to  keep  you  from 
degrading  it. 

"  Thus  Nature  gives  us  (let  it  check  our  pride) 
The  virtue  nearest  to  our  vice  allied." 

There  is  nothing  which  more  beautifully  and 
grandly  expands  personality  than  an  unselfish 
love,  the  love  of  one  man  for  one  woman.  So 
many  disqualify  themselves  for  it  by  giving 
rein  to  lust,  and  yet  lust  is  only  perverted 
love.  The  whole  world  is  larger,  more  glo- 
rious, to  the  man  who  keeps  that  instinct  pure. 
Instead  of  making  a  frontal  attack  upon  sen- 
sual temptation,  fling  the  manhood  and  the 
power  that  is  its  endowment  upon  the  highest ; 
look  right  away  from  yourself  up  to  the  ideal, 
to  that  God  Who  has  given  you  your  manhood 
in  order  that  He  may  make  it  all  divine. 

To  the  man  who  feels  himself  to  be  in 
danger  in  mid-life,  because  of  his  worldly  in- 
terests and  success,  I  would  say,  You  ought 
never  to  expect  failure.  You  are  God's  trus- 
tee, take  care  to  hold  loosely  that  which  God 
has  given  you,  for  by  and  by  that  will  be 
gone;  but  your  manhood  will  remain.  Meas- 
ure all  your  daily  activities  in  their  spiritual 


156     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

equivalents.  Do  not  deem  it  a  bad  thing  that 
you  have  to  make  choice  between  the  lower 
and  the  higher;  do  not  be  cast  down  if  you  do 
feel  the  force  of  a  temptation  sometimes  to  in- 
crease your  success  by  illegitimate  means. 
Every  time  such  a  suggestion  comes  God  is 
suggesting  a  higher  choice:  make  the  higher, 
and  make  it  in  company  with  Him.  There  is 
nothing  in  business  life  that  need  degrade  a 
man.  I  can  think  of  no  worthier  pursuit  than 
that  of  the  man  who  in  industrial  forms  is 
trying  to  serve  the  community  for  the  com- 
munity's good.  If  only  he  keep  watch  and 
ward  upon  his  manhood,  the  greatest  asset  of 
all  that  he  affords  the  community  is  the  gift  of 
himself. 

Lastly,  I  would  have  you  remember  that 
temptation  has  two  deadly  allies — self-con- 
sciousness and  fear.  A  self-centred  morality 
is  unhealthy.  So  many  of  us  in  our  battle  with 
temptation — perhaps  this  is  more  feminine  than 
masculine — turn  our  eyes  inward;  we  think, 
and  perhaps  say.  This  is  my  battle,  and  I  only 
can  win  this;  this  is  my  victory,  and  we  are 
only  trying  to  draw  away  from  the  enemy  and 
escape  the  grip  of  his  cruel  claw.  Whereas,  in- 
stead of  talking  about  "  my  "  battle  and  "  my '' 
victory,  we  might  speak  about  God's  battle  and 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     157 

God's  victory  in  us,  and  instead  of  drawing 
away  from  the  foe,  look  up  to  the  highest  and 
say,  I  must  attain  it.    Instead  of  making  your 
struggle  negative,  make  it  positive;  instead  of 
dwelling  upon  the  power  of  the  temptation, 
dwell  upon  the  goal  that  God  intends  us  to 
make.     The  struggle  is  worthless  if  it  is  for 
your  sake  alone,  and  the  power  of  the  adver- 
sary is  increased  the  more  you  think  upon  that 
power.    The  antidote  to  such  self-consciousness 
in  moral  struggle  is  to  look  away  from  self 
to  God;  indeed,  sometimes  the  ideal  that  you 
are  called  upon  to  serve  is  more  clearly  seen 
in  the  darkness  than  in  the  light.     We  take 
things  very  calmly  and  dispassionately  when 
the  sun  is  shining,  and  sometimes  we  deceive 
ourselves  into  thinking  that  we  are  better  men 
than  we  are,  simply  because  there  is  no  battle 
to  fight  for  the  time  being.     But  in  the  dark 
time,  when  there  is  a  struggle,  we  see  far  more 
clearly  what  it  is  that  God  intends  us  to  do. 
Just  because  we  are  tempted  away  from  it  the 
ideal  becomes  more  distinct.    I  remember  hear- 
ing of  a  diamond  district  in  Africa  where  the 
diamond  shone  only  in  the  night.    It  was  seen 
by  many  people,  particularly  by  one  man ;  but 
it  never  could  be  found  in  the  day.     As  it 
shone  straight  across  the  ravine,  on  one  side 


158     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

of  which  this  man  stood,  he  determined  that 
he  would  aim  at  the  point  in  the  darkness.  He 
fired  his  shot,  and  the  next  day  he  found  the 
diamond  bearing  the  mark  of  the  rifle.  He 
could  not  see  it  in  the  day,  he  saw  it  distinctly 
in  the  night.  We  often  have  to  fire  our  shot 
in  the  darkness;  most  clearly  then  can  we  see 
the  ideal  when  we  are  most  in  danger  of  losing 
it.  But  do  not  fail  to  aim,  for,  so  certainly  as 
you  serve  in  the  dark  the  highest  that  God  has 
made  you  capable  of  seeing,  so  certainly  shall 
you  have  the  fruits  of  your  struggle  when  the 
sunshine  comes  again.  We  are  inclined  to 
dwell  too  much  upon  our  own  particular 
struggle,  and,  so  certainly  as  we  do,  fear  be- 
comes the  enemy  and  adds  intensely  to  tempta- 
tion. I  do  not  know  anything  more  deadly  in 
moral  struggle  than  the  presence  of  the  grim 
spectre  of  fear.  Could  you  abandon  fear,  you 
have  already  won  your  victory.  The  antidote 
to  fear  is  faith.  Believe  it  is  the  will  of  God 
that  you  should  not  be  a  failure,  do  not  har- 
bour the  thought  of  defeat  for  an  instant,  trust 
your  concerns  to  Him,  the  tides  of  God  will 
float  you.  Every  man  is  in  possession  of  im- 
mense resources  of  unused  spiritual  power. 
The  Eternal  is  already  within  you,  and  no  man 
is  weak  who  has  hold  of  the  arm  of  God.    Re- 


STRUGGLE  WITH  TEMPTATION     159 

main  calm  and  trust  to  Him.  The  universe  is 
so  made  that  the  righteous  man  is  vindicated  in 
the  long-  run.  Here  is  a  ship  lying  upon  the 
beach;  watch  the  fishermen  trying  to  launch 
her.  It  cannot  be  done,  the  ocean  has  ebbed. 
What  do  those  who  have  charge  of  the  ship 
do — quit  it?  That  would  be  a  foolish  pro- 
ceeding, for  the  tide  is  coming  in.  Stay  on 
the  ship  and  be  still,  the  problem  is  not  really 
yours.  Perhaps  in  the  night,  while  you  sleep 
at  your  -post,  the  tides  will  come  and  lift  your 
barque  away.  God's  tides  will  float  any  man 
who  commits  himself  to  them  in  sincerity  and 
simple-hearted  trust. 

We  are  never  left  to  struggle  by  ourselves. 
We  talk  as  if  we  were  in  a  lonely  place  and 
there  were  no  God,  no  power  unseen,  no 
Eternal  that  the  prayer  of  faith  could  reach. 
It  is  not  so;  present  in  the  conflict  is  One  like 
unto  ourselves,  touched  with  the  feeling  of 
our  infirmities,  and  in  that  He  Himself  hath 
suffered,  being  tempted.  He  is  able  to  succour 
them  that  are  tempted. 

It  is  related  that  during  one  of  Napoleon's 
campaigns  the  French  army  was  stricken  with 
fever,  and  there  was  very  great  danger  that  it 
would  be  decimated,  not  by  the  enemy,  but  by 
the  plague.     In  spite  of  all  the  protestations 


160     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

of  his  generals,  the  Emperor  walked  through 
the  camp,  where  the  sick  were  laid  in  rows, 
touching  one  man  here,  speaking  to  another 
man  there,  letting  his  eagle  eye  fall  upon  an- 
other yonder.  The  effect  was  electrical.  Sick 
men  leaped  from  their  beds,  calling,  "  The  Em- 
peror !  "  Napoleon's  courage,  far  more  than 
anything  else  could  have  done,  and  the  sense 
of  his  presence,  saved  the  army  from  the  most 
deadly  enemy,  not  the  plague,  but  the  fear 
which  had  infected  the  soldiers.  We  are  not 
alone  in  our  struggle.  Jesus  Imperator,  hold- 
ing the  keys  of  death  and  hell.  Master  of  the 
universe.  King  of  kings,  and  Lord  of  lords,  is 
here.  We  must  not  think  of  Christ  as  in  a 
far-distant  heaven,  looking  upon  the  struggles 
of  earth,  but  present  in  the  midst  of  them.  Our 
Emperor  is  walking  through  the  ranks. 

*'  The  healing  of  His  seamless  dress 

Is  by  our  beds  of  pain; 
We  touch  Him  in  life's  throng  and  press, 

And  we  are  whole  again. 
O  Lord  and  Master  of  us  all, 

Whate'er  our  name  or  sign, 
We  own  Thy  sway,  we  hear  Thy  call, 

We  test  our  lives  by  Thine." 


IX 

THE  TWO   SIDES   OF  TEMPTA- 
TION 


IX 


THE    TWO    SIDES    OF    TEMPTA- 
TION 

Blessed  is  the  man  thai  endureth  temptation  ;  for 
when  he  is  tried  he  shall  receive  the  crown  of  life, 
which  the  Lord  hath  promised  to  them  that  love  Him. 

Let  no  man  say  when  he  is  te??ipted,  I  am  tempted  of 
God;  for  God  cannot  be  te77ipted  with  evil,  neither 
tempteth  He  any  man.— fames  i.  12,  ij. 

HERE  again  is  this  puzzling  antithetic 
statement,  all  the  more  perplexing 
when  we  read  the  context.  Let  me 
once  more  remind  you  of  it.  The  second  verse 
of  this  chapter  says,  "  My  brethren,  count  it  all 
joy  when  ye  fall  into  divers  temptation."  The 
second  verse  of  our  text  says,  "  Let  no  man 
when  he  is  tempted  say,  I  am  tempted  of  God." 
"  Count  it  all  joy  when  ye  fall  into  divers  temp- 
tations." Yet  **  Every  man  is  drawn  away  by 
his  own  lusts,  and  enticed,"  not  tempted  of 
God. 

When  we  take  the  text  itself,  without  going 
to  the  context  at  all,  we  see  from  the  apostle's 
reference  that  of  deliberate  and  set  purpose  he 
163 


164     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

puts  these  two  sides  of  temptation  before  us, 
one  in  which  he  says  it  is  a  glorious  thing,  with 
a  reward  at  the  other  side  of  it,  that  a  man 
should  fight  and  overcome  temptation ;  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  he  bids  us  beware.  He  sets  it 
down  in  writing,  close  to  his  former  statement, 
that  no  man  is  entitled  to  say  when  he  is 
tempted,  "  I  am  tempted  of  God."  But  here  is 
the  point,  and  the  explanation — '^  For  God  can- 
not be  tempted  of  evil."  And  we  might  insert 
one  little  word  and  illumine  the  whole  verse, 
the  word  "  so  " — neither  so  tempteth  He  any 
man.  And  by  adding  a  little  to  the  context  we 
may  throw  a  little  more  light  on  it,  if  I  may 
amplify — "  For  every  man  is  tempted  evilly 
when  he  is  drawn  away  with  his  own  lusts  and 
enticed — God  never  so  tempteth  any  man." 
Now  sum  it  up.  Every  temptation  may  be  a 
call  upward  on  the  part  of  God,  or  it  may  be  a 
solicitation  downwards.  The  former  is  a  sum- 
mons to  prove  our  spiritual  manhood,  it  is  no 
solicitation  to  evil;  and  the  latter  the  fruit  of 
the  evil  resident  in  every  man  and  which  may 
be  appealed  to  and  assailed  by  the  evil  from 
without. 

It  is  solicitation  downward  to  which  we 
usually  give  the  name  of  temptation ;  but  temp- 
tation has  two  sides — God's  summons  upward, 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION     165 

which  is  necessary  for  any  man  who  would  be 
a  good  man,  to  fight  his  battle  and  to  win  his 
victory,  and  there  is  never  any  need  for  him 
to  fail  in  the  contest  that  God  gives — God  sum- 
mons us  only  upwards.  Bu4:,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  a  side  of  temptation,  and  it  may 
be  sought  by  a  man  himself,  in  which  is  a 
distinct  solicitation  downward,  with  which  God 
has  nothing  to  do,  a  man's  evil  nature  or  a 
man's  evil  environment,  or  both  together,  and 
the  result  of  his  own  wilfulness  may  lead  him 
to  disaster. 

My  purpose  in  once  more  setting  before  you 
this  almost  paradoxical  text  is  this — I  want  to 
help  some,  if  possible,  who  are  struggling  with 
temptation,  in  one  or  more  of  its  many  forms, 
and  who,  perhaps,  think  themselves  to  be  in 
greater  danger  than  they  are. 

For  some  years  past  I  have  conducted  in  a 
weekly  paper  a  column  of  correspondence  on 
moral  and  intellectual  questions — a  correspond- 
ence which  is  largely  taken  advantage  of  by 
young  people.  It  has  taught  me  a  good  deal, 
and  if  one  wanted  to  illustrate  almost  any  ser- 
mon, no  matter  what,  one  has  only  to  go  to 
one's  correspondence  for  that  particular  week. 
This  week,  oddly  enough,  I  gathered  a  few 
questions  relating  to  practically  the  same  prob- 


166     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

lem,  and  amongst  them  was  one  from  four 
young  men,  who  have  written  a  letter  between 
them  and  signed  it,  regarding  a  form  of  temp- 
tation about  which  I  must  say  something. 
Nearly  every  man  in  this  building  knows  some- 
thing about  it.  It  is  very  far  from  being  a 
savoury  subject,  and  it  is  one  I  would  much 
rather  avoid,  but  it  is  not  one's  duty  to  shirk 
unpleasant  subjects.  It  seems  to  me  that  there 
are  more  ways  than  one  of  handling  an  ob- 
jectionable theme.  The  question  was  put  to 
me  something  like  this — "  We  are  four  Chris- 
tian friends.  We  know  each  other  very  closely 
and  help  each  other  in  Christian  work.  But 
lately,  in  an  hour  of  confidence,  we  have  con- 
fessed to  each  other  our  chief  besetment,  and, 
to  put  it  frankly,  it  is  sensual  sin.  We  are  hu- 
miliated by  it.  We  feel  that,  if  we  could,  we 
would  get  free  of  it  entirely.  We  would  serve 
God  in  pure,  clean,  manly  lives.  But  it  seems 
to  us  as  though  the  battle  to  which  we  are  ex- 
posed is  somewhat  unfair.  It  is  too  fierce,  and 
the  odds  against  us  are  too  strong.  Can  you 
tell  us  what  to  do  ?  " 

I  do  not  suppose  there  is  one  young  man — 
at  any  rate  there  are  very  few — who  does  not 
know  something  about  this  insidious,  baneful, 
humiliating  fact.    I  admit  the  fierceness  of  the 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION     167 

conflict  to  which  you  are  exposed  by  the 
strength  of  your  passions,  and  shall  I  say  by 
your  youth?  It  avails  little  for  me  to  tell  you 
that  by  and  by  you  will  wonder  that  you  ever 
feared  the  temptation  so  much  as  you  fear  it 
now.  But  I  want  to  tell  you  also  that  to  assert 
that  there  is  any  need  for  a  man  to  commit 
sensual  sin  is  a  lie.  Just  believe  that  what  I 
tell  you  is  true ;  there  is  no  need  for  you  to  fall. 
You  will  go  into  certain  company  where  you 
will  be  told  that  all  men  fail  in  this  particular 
fashion.  It  is  untrue !  You  may  be  told  also 
that  it  would  be  impossible  for  you  to  fight 
your  battle  to  a  finish.  That  is  equally  false. 
You  are  not  to  blame  for  the  presence  of  temp- 
tation, but  I  think  you  are  to  blame,  often,  for 
the  ways  in  which  you  attempt  to  face  it.  Re- 
gard me  as  a  brother  of  yours,  as  it  were, 
speaking  on  a  level  with  you,  quietly,  and  as 
delicately  as  I  know  how.  I  want  to  warn  you 
against  taking  either  too  lightly  or  too  seriously 
this  infirmity,  this  propensity  of  the  flesh.  It  is 
a  loathsome  subject,  but  the  manhood  of  the 
nation,  the  moral  fibre  of  our  race,  is  imperilled 
just  now  by  not  a  few  things,  and  this  is  one  of 
them.  It  is  a  trite  saying  that  Rome,  that  vast 
empire  that  comprised  the  civilised  world,  fell 
from  within,  not  through  the  attacks  of  our 


168     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

ancestors  from  without  (fierce,  tmtutored, 
clean-living  barbarians),  but  through  the  vices 
of  her  manhood  and  womanhood  within. 
Now  it  is  true  to-day  that  in  Eni^land  we  are 
in  danger  from  just  that  kind  of  loose  prac- 
tice and  the  flabby  kind  of  hedonism  which 
describes  this  kind  of  sin  as  either  inevitable 
or  as  of  little  importance.  It  is  true,  on  the 
contrary,  that  the  well-being  and  the  future  of 
our  great  Empire,  of  which  we  are  all  proud, 
and  the  very  existence  of  which  gives  a 
certain  moral  value  to  every  man  in  this 
place,  is  imperilled  by  this  particular  kind  of 
sin. 

Now,  let  me  tell  you  how  to  meet  it.  In 
the  first  place,  I  want  you  manly  young  fellows 
not  to  be  morbid  in  the  presence  of  it,  not  to  be 
afraid  of  it,  not  to  allow  your  thoughts  to  be 
occupied  too  much  with  it.  Above  all,  shun 
the  company  of  and  dismiss  the  friend  who 
insists  on  directing  your  attention  to  it.  He 
is  no  friend,  and  that  company  is  bad.  A 
friend  of  mine  a  few  days  ago,  speaking  to  me 
about  this  enormous  problem,  said,  "  I  have 
two  sons  now  on  the  threshold  of  manhood.  I 
know  what  they  have  to  meet.  I  know  the 
perils  that  lurk  in  their  path  and  the  snares 
that  are  set  for  them.     So,  being  a  Christian 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION    169 

man,  as  well  as,  I  trust,  an  affectionate  and 
loyal  father,  I  have  taken  these  two  boys  into 
my  confidence  and  I  have  told  them  all  about 
the  matter.  I  have  bidden  them  be  aware  that 
almost  every  man  whom  they  admire  and  re- 
spect has  had  his  battle  to  fight  with  the  flesh." 
You  see,  young  men  are  apt  to  jump  at  the  con- 
clusion that  every  noble  character  in  history 
or  in  the  life  of  to-day  has  been  in  some  mys- 
terious fashion  immune  from  the  desires  of 
the  flesh.  It  is  not  true!  But  I  will  tell  you 
what  is  true.  That  good  father  knew,  when 
he  talked  to  his  boys,  what  the  truth  is,  that 
such  men  as  these  refuse  to  live  in  the  pesti- 
lential atmosphere,  the  noisome  surrounding 
of  carnal  temptation.  On  the  contrary,  they 
set  their  thoughts  on  the  highest  point  of  hu- 
man aspiration.  There  is  God  within  you,  and 
there  is  a  devil,  too.  There  is  manhood  at  its 
best  if  you  will  only  trust  it,  and  there  is  the 
beast.  You  are  approached  from  two  sides. 
You  are  summoned  heavenward  by  the  very 
fact  that  you  have  a  conflict  at  all.  That  is 
the  way  to  make  a  man  of  you.  You  have  to 
fight  and  you  have  to  win,  and  you  are  being 
drawn  downward  by  that  with  which  in  the 
flesh  you  are  most  closely  allied,  the  creatures 
that  crawl,  and  God  asks  you,  and  heaven  ex- 


170     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

pects  you,  to  fight  your  battle  in  the  strength 
Divine,  and  to  come  out  conqueror.  I  want  you 
not  to  be  overwhelmed  with  humiliation  at  the 
presence  of  such  temptation.  It  is  not  the  pres- 
ence of  the  temptation  that  is  wrong  in  you ;  it  is 
becoming  its  victim.  More  than  that — I  would 
like  you  to  understand  that  the  best  way  to 
fight  it  is  not  to  make  a  frontal  attack.  It 
is  by  looking  away  from  it,  fixing  your  gaze  on 
something  worthy  of  your  best  efforts  and 
energies.  What  is  that?  Surely  it  is  the 
Christ,  the  Christ  and  all  Christ-made  men,  the 
Christ  in  His  moral  ideal,  the  Christ  in  all  that 
that  winsome  name  stands  for.  Here  is  the 
beauty  of  this  method  to  which  I  recommend 
you — the  Christ  Himself  is  the  very  means  of 
your  victory.  If  I  could  only  get  men,  not  only 
in  this  particular  conflict,  but  in  every  other,  to 
understand  and  to  realise  and  to  believe  that 
the  Divine  within  them  is  stronger  than  the 
earthly,  they  would  win  every  time. 

It  is  not  true  that  you  are  left  to  yourself. 
It  is  not  true  that  you  need  to  go  under.  It 
is  true  that  you  have  to  fight,  but  it  is  also 
true  that  you  are  called  to  trust.  To  trust  the 
best  means  victory  before  the  battle  is  fought. 
"  Blessed  is  the  man  that  endureth  temptation, 
for  when  he  is  tried  he  shall  receive  the  crown 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION    171 

of  life  which  the  Lord  hath  promised  to  them 
that  love  Him." 

I  would  like  to  ask  you  now  to  permit  me 
to  pass  to  another  aspect  of  this  subject,  on 
which  one  feels  impelled  to  speak,  but  which 
is  not  so  objectionable.     It  is  allied  to  what  I 
have  just  been  saying-,  and  is  all  the  more 
dangerous  because  it  comes  to  us  in  the  garb 
of  something  noble.     I  have  been  struck  of 
late   with    the   number   of   people,    men   and 
women,  who  have  come  to  me  for  advice  on 
subjects  of  this  kind.     Two  people  work  to- 
gether,  a  young  man  and  a  young  woman, 
helping  each  other  in  Christian  service  either 
in  the  place  of  business  or  in   the  Church. 
They  establish  what  they  call  Platonic  friend- 
ship.    They  never  can  become  husband  and 
wife.     But  by  and  by  they  begin  to  speak  of 
the  high  regard  in  which  they  hold  each  other, 
how  much  of  Christ  the  one  can  discern  in  the 
other  and  so  on.     They  speak  of  love,   but 
they  speak  of  it,  they  think,  in  terms  that  are 
highest.    Then  the  question  arises — Is  this  re- 
lationship equivocal  and   dangerous,  or  is  it 
not?    There  is  something  fascinating  in  it,  so 
mysteriously  and  sweetly  romantic  oftentimes. 
But  there  is  nothing,  I  think,  more  deadly  in 
the  whole  range  of  life  and  of  experience.    It 


m     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

has  wrecked  many  a  career  and  will  do  it 
again.  And  if  you  are  in  any  such  situation, 
let  me  tell  you  what  to  do — Get  at  once,  with- 
out further  dallying  or  consideration,  out  of 
equivocal  relationships  which  must  result  in 
moral  mischief  and  may  result  in  disaster  and 
in  ruin.  You  remember  Lancelot's  testimony 
in  the  "  Idylls  of  the  King,"  when  he  stood 
face  to  face  with  the  friend  he  was  injuring : 

"  In  me  lived  a  sin 
So  strange,  of  such  a  kind,  that  all  of  pure, 
Noble,  and  knightly  in  me  climbed  and  clung 
Round  that  one  sin,  until  the  wholesome  flower 
And  poisonous  grew  together,  each  as  each 
Not  to  be  plucked  asunder." 

You  remember,  too,  the  reply  of  the  King : 

"  Nay — but  thou  errest,  Lancelot;  never  yet 
Could  all  of  true  and  noble  in  knight  and  man 
Twine  round  one  sin,  whatever  it  might  be. 
With  such  a  closeness,  but  apart  there  grew 
Some  root  of  knighthood  and  pure  nobleness; 
Whereto  see  thou,  that  it  may  bear  its  flower." 

I  would  say  to  every  one  of  you  who  is  in 
that  entanglement  or  danger,  the  very  highest 
in  you  lies  very  close  to  the  lowest.  Keep 
right  away  from  the  region  of  temptation. 
The  apostle  saw  deeply  into  human  nature 
when  he  put  so  close  together  this  Godlike 
side  of  the  conflict  and  this  earthward  side. 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION     17S 

"  Blessed  is  the  man  that  endureth."  Blessed 
is  the  man  who  knows,  when  he  is  face  to 
face  with  temptation,  what  its  real  name  is 
and  gets  the  victory.  This  may  take  many 
forms;  temptation  nearly  always  comes  with 
a  lie  on  its  face  and  bids  us  call  sin  by  a  wrong 
name.  Be  faithful  with  yourself,  no  matter 
what  the  temptation  may  happen  to  be.  The 
other  side  of  every  sin  is  sorrow  and  remorse. 
Reckon  with  Christ,  not  after  sin  is  committed, 
but  before,  and  test  every  question  by  His 
name  and  Spirit.  It  is  no  use  for  a  man  to 
say,  "  I  did  not  know,  and  the  conflict  be- 
came too  much  for  me."  We  always  know 
enough  before  sin  is  committed  to  be  able  to 
say,  "  This  is  wrong."  The  highest  courage 
oftentimes  is  to  turn  and  flee. 

Now,  brethren,  I  have  done  with  that.  I 
have  spoken  as  a  matter  of  simple  duty,  and 
it  is  probable  in  doing  so  I  have  done  as  much 
service  to  my  Master  as  by  anything  I  have 
ever  said  before.  If  you  knew  life  as  some 
fathers  and  mothers  know  it,  you  would  feel 
that  it  was  your  duty  to  sustain,  by  every 
means  in  your  power,  by  prayer  and  by  ex- 
ample, and  if  necessary  by  testimony,  every 
effort  to  stem  this  particular  torrent  of  evil. 
But  it  is  one  thing  to  do  that,  It  is  another 


174     THE  CHOICE  OP  THE  HIGHEST 

thing  to  be  always  talking  about  it,  and  I  am 
strongly  of  opinion  that  some  well-meaning 
people  to-day  do  more  harm  than  good  by 
thrusting  upon  the  attention  of  the  young  al- 
ways and  everywhere  questions  of  that  kind. 
Far  better  to  make  an  atmosphere  in  which  it 
is  difficult  for  the  temptation  to  live.  Seeing 
that  it  is  there,  do  not  let  us  be  afraid  of  calling 
it  by  its  name  and  invoking  the  power  of 
Christ  to  deal  with  it. 

Now  I  want  to  go  on  to  speak  of  another 
form  of  temptation  which  I  know  is  also 
deadly,  but  which  is  far  removed  from  what  I 
have  been  describing.  This,  too,  has  two  sides. 
All  this  time  you  will  observe  that  I  have  been 
speaking  to  people  who  stay  more  or  less  in  the 
presence  of  sin  when  they  ought  to  get  out  of 
it.  Now  I  want  to  speak  of  some  of  God's 
people  who,  whether  they  will  or  not,  as  it 
were,  are  thrust  into  the  presence  of  a  sorrow 
which  contains  within  itself  a  temptation.  For 
instance,  among  those  who  have  written  to  me 
there  was  the  wife  of  a  man  who  is  now,  it 
seems,  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  but  who  was  once 
a  prosperous  man  of  business,  a  brave-hearted, 
righteous  man,  who  did  all  the  good  he  could 
within  his  particular  sphere.  Ruin  came,  she 
does  not  say  how.    The  family  has  been  scat- 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION     175 

tered,  the  husband,  as  you  see,  is  almost  worse 
than  dead,  and  she  asks  of  her  minister,  and 
myself,  this  difficult  question,  "  Can  I  keep  my 
Christianity?  Is  not  trust  in  God  meaning- 
less? Have  you  a  word  of  comfort?" — Now 
it  is  very  probable  that  there  are  people  in  this 
church  who  have  passed  through  tragedies  as 
great,  or  nearly  as  great  as  this.  Some  of  you 
are  in  the  midst  of  them  now.  Far  be  it  from 
me,  who  have  not  your  life  to  live  and  do  not 
know  your  trouble  as  you  know  it,  to  talk 
lightly  or  dogmatically  and  with  much  assur- 
ance as  to  what  you  ought  to  do ;  but  in  God's 
Word  I  think  I  see  something  about  you  and 
your  life.  Temptation,  as  St.  James  uses  the 
word,  has  two  meanings,  or  rather  one  mean- 
ing which  in  English  has  become  two  words. 
In  this  very  chapter  and  in  others  the  word 
"  trial "  is  the  same  as  the  word  that  is  given 
as  "  temptation  " — trial,  sorrow,  calamity, 
tragedy,  pain,  and  suffering  of  all  kinds,  what- 
ever it  may  be.  Do  you  not  see,  then,  what 
the  apostle  means,  that  in  all  sorrow  there 
is  a  subtle  temptation?  You  may  be  a  worse 
man  for  having  been  caused  to  pass  through 
pain,  or  you  may  be  a  better  one — which  shall 
it  be?  Remember,  God  summons  no  man  to 
failure.     We  do  not  ask  that  the  way  shall 


176      THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

be  made  pleasant  to  us,  but  what  we  ask  is 
this,  that  we  shall  never  prove  unworthy  of 
that  high  calling  unto  which  we  are  called. 
So  I  would  say,  however  fierce  the  blast,  how- 
ever stern  the  trouble  to  which  God  has  called 
you,  look  up,  look  over,  there  is  another  side 
and  a  dawning  of  the  morning. 

Now  to  illustrate  what  I  mean,  I  will  show 
you  how  it  has  been  done.  Let  me  tell  you  of 
yet  another  letter,  written  by  a  man  who  asked 
me  a  question  quite  remote  from  this  one,  and 
in  so  doing  placed  his  experience  before  me 
thus :  "  Some  years  ago,"  he  said,  "  God  took 
from  me,  one  after  the  other,  and  all  near  to- 
gether, all  my  four  children,  and  I  remember 
the  Gethsemane  of  that  experience  as  acutely 
as  though  it  were  yesterday.  When  one  boy 
lay  dead  in  one  room  I  had  to  go  with  cheer- 
ful, smiling  face  into  the  next  one,  because  the 
doctor  told  me  I  must  give  no  shock  to  my 
suffering  little  one  there,  and  with  a  cheerful 
demeanour  and  without  reference  to  the 
shadow  of  death  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall 
I  had  to  tell  him  all  I  could  to  make  him  glad 
and  to  keep  him  hopeful.  Oh,"  he  added, 
*'  there  never  was  anything  more  grimly  dread- 
ful, surely,  in  the  world!  "  I  agree;  it  is  true; 
but  that  man  kept  his  faith.    He  kept  it  right 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION    177 

through  that  terrible  time.  He  is  as  sure  of 
God  to-day  as  he  was  then,  and  he  says  his 
children  are  safe  in  the  arms  of  Jesus.  I  know 
it  may  seem  to  a  man  without  faith  a  most  un- 
real and  foolish  thing  that  he  should  speak  so, 
but  he  does  speak  so.  He  thinks  he  knows  a 
little  more  now  what  wrung  the  Saviour's 
heart  than  he  did  before.  It  was  his  time  of 
trial  and  the  trial  contained  a  temptation,  and 
God  called  him  upward  by  it,  and  he  obeyed, 
and  he  stands  on  a  spiritual  plane  where  he 
never  stood  before.  "  Blessed  is  the  man  that 
endureth  temptation,  for  when  he  is  tried 
he  shall  receive  the  crown  of  life,  which 
the  Lord  hath  promised  to  them  that  love 
Him." 

There  may  be  some  one  here  who  will  speak 
to  me  in  these  terms :  **  There  are  seasons 
when  I  cannot  pray,  when  it  seems  as  though 
the  power  to  pray  leaves  me,  when  to  utter 
one  single  sentence  to  God  seems  a  thing  with- 
out soul  and  without  meaning.  Do  you  know 
what  that  is,  to  feel  that  you  cannot  pray?" 
Well,  that  is  a  very  stern  time,  a  testing  time. 
Mind  what  you  do.  That  is  just  the  time 
when  you  must  pray.  There  will  be  no  such 
feeling  as  rewards  you  at  other  times,  but  that 
prayer  has  gone  heavenwards,  be  sure,  and  it 


178     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

will  come  back  laden  with  blessed  results. 
Gk)d  knows  the  worth  of  such  a  prayer,  wrung 
from  a  heart  in  agony.  Do  not  turn  your  face 
from  the  light.  Your  only  safety  is  in  stand- 
ing by  the  best,  in  holding  on.  Victory  waits 
upon  your  expectation  thereof.  God  can  give 
you  that  victory  every  time. 

Such  a  period  and  such  an  experience  just 
bring  you  to  this.  You  see  how  little  strength 
there  is  in  you,  how  little  your  resolutions 
mean,  how  small  is  your  own  moral  resource. 
It  is  all  of  God.  If  there  is  any  good  in  you 
whatever,  it  is  all  of  God;  we  can  praise  His 
holy  Name  that  there  is  enough  there.  My 
friend  Mr.  Jowett  was  preaching  on  Wednes- 
day morning  in  my  hearing  at  Newcastle,  and 
in  his  sermon  told  an  experience  of  his  early 
days  when  he  was  a  minister  in  Newcastle. 
He  said  there  sat  near  the  pulpit  an  old  man 
who  used  to  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer  along 
with  the  minister,  in  tones  which  were  dis- 
tinctly audible  to  the  man  in  the  pulpit.  When 
Mr.  Jowett  reached  the  ascription,  "  Thine  is 
the  kingdom,  and  the  power,  and  the  glory,"  at 
the  utterance  of  the  word  "  Power  "  the  old 
man  used  to  say  quietly,  "  Hallelujah,  halle- 
lujah." "  He  never  said  it  anywhere  else," 
declared  Mr.  Jowett,  "  only  there.    I  saw  what 


TWO  SIDES  OF  TEMPTATION     179 

he  meant — *  Thine  is  the  power,'  always,  every- 
where." 

Oh,  you  struggHng  men  and  women,  lay 
hold,  lay  hold !  "  For  we  have  not  an  high 
priest  that  cannot  be  touched  with  the  feeling 
of  our  infirmities,  but  one  that  hath  been 
tempted  in  all  points  like  as  we  are,  yet  without 
sin."  It  is  not  by  imitating  Him  only  that  I 
win,  it  is  by  laying  hold  of  Him.  Blessed  is 
the  man  that  can  hold  on  to  the  Christ.  And 
I  think  I  hear  Him  say,  "  To  him  that  over- 
cometh  will  I  give  to  sit  down  with  Me  in  My 
throne,  even  as  I  also  overcame  and  am  set 
down  with  My  Father  in  His  throne." 


X 
THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS 

The  father  said,  Bring  forth  the  best  robe,  and  put 
it  on  him. — Luke  xv.  22. 

THE  circumstances  under  which  these 
words  came  to  be  spoken  by  our  dear 
Lord  are  worth  a  few  moments'  con- 
sideration. If  we  are  to  beheve  a  great  New 
Testament  scholar,  it  is  probable  that  the  three 
parables  contained  in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of 
St.  Luke  were  a  sermon  spoken  by  Him  Who 
spake  as  never  man  spake,  in  the  courtyard  of 
the  house  of  Matthew  the  publican,  and  to  a 
very  composite  audience.  Our  Master  had  just 
finished  His  ministry  to  the  synagogue-going 
people,  and,  being  anxious  to  take  the  same 
message  to  the  vast  number  of  outsiders  who 
then  and  now  were  to  be  found  in  multitudes, 
he  asked  Matthew  the  publican  to  make  a  place 
for  Him  and  bid  all  his  own  class  there  too. 
And  there  came  publicans  and  sinners,  as  we 
read  in-  the  beginning  of  the  chapter,  all  the 
social  outcasts,  all  the  people  who  had  done 
183 


184     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

with  religion  and  to  whom  rehgion  had  no 
more  to  say.  Probably  they  were  crowded 
into  that  courtyard  very  much  as  you  are 
crowded  in  here,  and  at  the  door  were  the 
astonished  Pharisees,  to  whom  He  had  been 
talking  up  to  now.  Turning  to  the  Master's 
immediate  followers,  they  said,  in  words  ex- 
pressive of  their  surprise,  "  This  man  receiveth 
sinners,  and  eateth  with  them." 

Then  our  Lord  began  to  speak ;  the  words  of 
His  text  are  probably  preserved  by  Matthew, 
the  sermon  by  Luke.  The  text  was,  "  Come 
unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy 
laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest."  The  publican, 
who  had  been  looking  for  this  very  thing  so 
long,  remembered  that  peerless  sentence  and 
wrote  it  down,  and  the  only  place  in  literature 
where  you  will  find  it  is  in  St.  Matthew's 
Gospel.  But  it  was  the  beloved  physician,  the 
Pharisee,  who  remembered  the  parable,  with 
the  figure  of  the  elder  brother  who  would  not 
come  in.  Was  Luke  with  the  people  round  the 
door?  The  parable  stops  abruptly  at  the 
father's  word,  "  Let  us  make  merry  and  be 
glad,  thy  brother  was  lost  and  is  found,"  and 
we  are  not  told  any  more  that  the  elder  brother 
did  not  come  in.  Luke  came  in,  and  he  lived 
to  write  the  chapter,  and  with  that  Pharisee  the 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     185 

publican  came  in  and  wrote  the  text.  And  with 
Matthew  and  Luke  the  Magdalen  came  in,  and 
the  new  life  was  begun.  Our  Lord's  converts 
from  that  day,  who  shall  number?  Shall  we 
ever  know  until  the  Great  Day?  Many  a  soul 
has  been  won  by  this  winsome  story  of  the 
prodigal  since  that  day. 

The  pith  and  the  marrow  of  it  are  in  the 
sentence  that  we  have  taken  as  our  text,  "  The 
father  said.  Bring  forth  the  best  robe,  and 
put  it  on  him."  The  fallen  sinner  is  offered  a 
place  before  the  throne.  The  blackest  of  trans- 
gressors is  offered  the  righteousness  of  the  Son 
of  God.  That  robe  of  righteousness,  that  gar- 
ment of  salvation,  is  given  to  all  who  in 
penitence  seek  it.  The  offer  is  so  simple,  so 
purely  unconditional,  that  man  has  found  it 
hard  to  believe.  *'  The  best  robe  " — not  the 
second  best — "  bring  that  forth  and  put  it  on 
him." 

Now,  the  question  which  has  been  addressed 
to  me  so  often,  and  which  from  this  text  I  try 
to  answer  to-night,  is  this :  "  How  far  does 
God's  forgiveness  go  ?  How  much  can  Christ's 
salvation  do?  Are  there  not  some  problems 
too  great  for  Him,  some  knots  that  nothing 
but  death  can  cut?  Is  the  Master  really 
master?     Are  not  the  consequences  of  some 


186     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

people's  sins  too  tragic,  too  terrible  for  any 
Gospel  to  meet?" 

Now,  here  am  I  with  the  Master's  words, 
"  The  best  robe."  There  is  nothing  too  in- 
tractable in  human  history  for  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  to  meet;  there  is  nothing  too  terrible 
for  the  great  Redeemer  Who  has  made  a  way 
for  us  into  the  holiest,  and  the  laceration  of 
His  own  heart  was  the  price  He  had  to  pay. 
There  is  no  corner  in  the  "  far  country  "  too 
remote  for  the  Shepherd  to  find  His  sheep,  and 
there  is  no  prodigal  in  this  place  who  is  deemed 
an  outcast  for  ever  from  the  Father's  home 
and  the  Father's  heart. 

And  yet  you  would  remind  me  that  the  facts 
of  life  seem  to  tell  against  this  winsome  theory. 
Well,  I  will  go  with  you  some  way.  It  does 
not  do  to  sprinkle  the  road  of  life  with  rose- 
water.  We  sin  not  with  impunity — you  must 
have  found  that  out.  There  are  some  people 
who  talk  very  lightly  about  the  wages  of  sin. 
Let  no  person  in  this  church  even  think  it  at 
this  moment,  for  perhaps  next  to  you  in  the 
pew  is  a  man  who  knows  from  bitter  experi- 
ence that  the  way  of  transgressors  is  hard. 
And  as  I  have  said  before,  if  there  were  no 
preaching  and  no  gospel,  and  if  we  could  sup- 
pose the  world  without  a  Christ,  the  problem 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     187 

would  still  be  there  in  all  its  poignancy.  Men 
want  to  know  how  to  escape  the  dread  conse- 
quences of  their  own  evil. 

Take,  for  example,  this  man  who  has  sinned 
against  his  constitution.  Need  you  go  further? 
Nature  knows  no  reversal  of  her  decrees. 
She  is  inexorable,  and  his  trembling,  palsied 
limbs  are  the  evidence  of  the  life  he  has  led. 
''  He  that  soweth  to  the  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh 
reap  corruption." 

There  is  that  man  who  has  flung  away  his 
social  opportunity.  If  you  could  read  his 
history  and  go  back  with  him  to  the  days  of 
early  manhood,  before  he  trifled  with  delicate 
things  and  violated  his  conscience,  and  injured 
his  fellows,  you  would  wonder  why  his  life 
should  ever  have  come  to  be  what  it  is  now. 
Judas  meant  well  when  he  joined  the  Twelve, 
and  the  Master  knew  it,  but  his  besetting  sin 
of  covetousness  was  his  ruin,  and  has  landed 
him  in  everlasting  infamy. 

Some  of  you  meant  well  at  twenty  years  of 
age.  You  are  ruined  at  thirty  or  forty,  and 
you  know  what  it  is  to  put  behind  you  all 
that  once  you  counted  good.  Are  you  tempted 
to  say,  "  My  punishment  is  greater  than  I  can 
bear"?  There  is  a  man  as  big  a  sinner  as 
you ;  he  has  done  things  that  would  damn  him 


188     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

if  the  world  knew  it,  but  it  does  not  know. 
You  feel  it  is  hard  that  you  should  be  down 
and  he  should  be  up;  but  do  not  make  any 
mistake,  his  time  is  coming  all  right.  God 
makes  no  mistakes.  You  think  to  yourself,  in 
sadness  perhaps,  but  in  penitence  I  trust : 

"  The  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

But  I  have  sterner  problems  yet.  There  are 
men  here  held  back  from  the  Highest  who  are 
accustomed  to  sneer  at  religion.  There  may 
be  a  good  reason  for  it  down  in  the  depths  of 
your  heart — it  is  not  confessed — it  is  this,  they 
feel  they  cannot  come  to  the  Cross  of  Christ 
and  leave  outside  in  the  world  the  wrecks  that 
they  have  made,  the  lives  that  they  have 
blighted,  the  suffering  they  have  caused. 

Here  is  a  man,  for  instance,  who  has  ruined 
a  woman  some  time  in  past  years.  You  are 
sitting  in  the  pew  now,  listening.  Where  is 
shef  If  you  could  just  get  back  twenty  years 
and  see  what  you  see  to-day,  if  you  could  only 
put  right  what  you  put  wrong,  if  you  could 
only  restore  innocency  to  that  life,  would  you 
not  do  it,  you  poor,  unhappy  wretch?  But 
while  I  offer  you  salvation  you  think,  "  Am 
I  a  slinking,  snivelling  cur?    Am  I  coming  to 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     189 

any  Cross  of  Christ  while  the  shame  and  ruin 
of  a  fellow-creature  are  working  out  their 
dread  result?  " 

Here  is  another.  Here  is  a  man  whose  evil 
life  has  been  visited  upon  his  children.  When 
we  call,  *'  Come  to  the  Cross !  "  he  thinks  of 
the  cross  that  is  already  borne  by  an  innocent 
little  one,  and  the  loathsome  disease  from 
which  that  child  suffers  is  an  unceasing  scourge 
to  him.    Will  penitence  put  it  right  ? 

And,  lastly,  it  may  be  there  is  that  man  with 
a  foul  and  loathsome  secret  in  his  life.  If  your 
wife  knew  what  you  are,  it  would  destroy  her 
peace  for  ever.  She  might  come  to  hate  you — 
oh,  no!  she  would  not!  That  is  not  woman's 
way.  But  you  dare  not  tell ;  yet  impossible  for 
you  for  ever,  so  would  you  think,  is  a  life  of 
purity  and  a  life  of  goodness.  You  would  feel 
like  a  hypocrite.  Atonement?  No;  you  must 
say,  or  you  do  say : 

"  The  moving  finger  writes;  and  having  writ 
Moves  on;  nor  all  your  piety  nor  wit 
Shall  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line. 
Nor  all  your  tears  wash  out  a  word  of  it." 

Brethren,  I  think  I  have  stated  the  facts 
pretty  fairly.  That  is  life,  the  life  about  which 
you  read  in  the  newspapers  and  the  popular 
novel — the  life  that  in  far  more  enthralling 


190     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

terms,  if  you  could  only  read  them,  is  written 
here. 

Now,  what  have  I  to  set  over  against  this? 
*'  Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be 
as  white  as  snow.  Though  they  be  red  like 
crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool."  For  "  God  so 
loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only-begotten 
Son  that  whosoever  believeth  on  Him  should 
not  perish,  but  have  everlasting  life."  And 
this  gospel,  this  mystery,  this  unfathomable 
atonement  covers  not  only  your  life  but  your 
record,  and  God's  goodness  can  track  out  all 
the  way  that  you  have  gone.  The  past  is  not 
yours,  the  future  is. 

Will  you  think  for  a  moment  perfectly 
clearly  upon  this  subject — sin  and  the  conse- 
quences thereof,  and  the  sequences  to  eternity  ? 
Remember  if  there  were  no  consequences  at  all 
— the  inwardness  of  the  transgression  of  the 
moral  law  is  not  hidden  from  the  sinner  nor 
from  God.  Our  Master  spoke  of  those  who 
committed  adultery  in  their  hearts.  They  have 
no  woundings  to  bring  home,  but  sin  is  sin 
against  God.  You  have  bruised  the  Face  of 
Christ  by  your  sins  of  thought,  as  well  as  of 
deed.  Sin  against  God  is  the  first  thing  to 
think  about,  and  such  sin,  repented  of,  can  be 
dealt  with  by  the  Eternal  Father.     Dismiss 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     191 

consequences  from  your  mind.  Think  of  the 
sin.  Lay  down  the  burden  of  guilt  at  the 
Cross.  God  cannot  deny  Himself.  There  is 
forgiveness  there. 

"  Just  as  I  am,  without  one  plea, 
But  that  Thy  Blood  was  shed  for  me, 
And  that  Thou  bidst  me  come  to  Thee, 
O  Lamb  of  God,  I  come  ! " 

And  we  must  all  come.  You  wish  you  were 
as  good  a  man  as  somebody  of  your  acquaint- 
ance. Do  you  know  that  when  he  wins 
through  into  heaven  it  will  be  the  robe  of 
Christ's  righteousness  he  shall  wear,  and  it 
will  be  the  same  colour  as  yours?  "What 
are  these  that  are  arrayed  in  white  robes,  and 
whence  came  they?  These  are  they  that  came 
out  of  great  tribulation,  and  have  washed  their 
robes  and  made  them  white  in  the  Blood  of  the 
Lamb."  Oh,  it  is  all  of  Jesus,  and  you  owe 
more  than  you  know. 

♦•  When  this  passing  world  is  done, 
When  has  sunk  yon  glaring  sun, 
When  we  stand  with  Christ  on  high 
Looking  o'er  life's  history, 
Then,  Lord,  shall  I  fully  know, 
Not  till  then,  how  much  we  owe." 

Just  this  fact  I  want  you  to  get  into  your 
rnind — God   forgives   without   reserve,   conse- 


192     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

quences  or  no  consequences.     It  is  the  sin  you 
repent  of,  not  the  consequences. 

Now  for  them.  Well,  brethren,  God  can 
remit  them  all  if  he  chooses,  every  one  of 
them.  He  can  make  that  poor  paralytic  whose 
evil  life  has  destroyed  his  manhood  to  be  as 
a  little  child  again  if  He  choose — if  He  choose 
— and,  brethren,  sometimes  God  has  swept 
away  every  trace  of  a  man's  wrong-doing,  and 
you  see  no  more  of  it  in  this  life,  and  there  are 
some  here  who  know  what  I  mean  by  that. 
Supposing  you  got  in  this  life  what  you  de- 
serve. There  are  some  miracles — men  who 
have  gone  to  the  very  edge  of  the  precipice,  and 
not  gone  over,  men  who  have  been  brought 
back  from  the  "  far  country,"  and  they  have 
had  over  again  something  of  the  portion  of 
goods  they  wasted  in  riotous  living.  And  there 
are  others  who  have  not,  and  you  still  speak  as 
if  God  was  implacable  and  had  excepted  you 
from  grace.  He  has  not.  I  want  you  to  think 
that  punishment  ceases  to  be  punishment  when 
penitence  finds  itself  at  the  Cross.  The  curse 
is  transformed;  it  is  now  the  cross,  and  every 
son  of  God  bears  one.  There  are  some  of  you 
who  would,  if  you  could,  get  back  and  stand 
at  the  beginning  of  life's  journey  again,  and 
not  bring  the  wreck  and  the  ruin  that  you  have 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     19S 

brought  into  your  own  life  and  other  people's. 
God  will  not  let  you  stand  there;  but  this  He 
does — He  will  lift  you  by  the  pain  He  leaves, 
and  if  you  had  not  had  this  cross  which  you 
feel  you  have  deserved,  you  would  have  had 
another,  for  "  whom  He  loveth,  He  chasten- 
eth,  and  scourgeth  every  son  whom  He  re- 
ceiveth." 

There  is  no  cross  so  likely  to  keep  a  man 
humble  as  that  which  will  remind  him  of  the 
life  he  once  lived  and  the  rescue  God  has  made. 
Even  the  suffering  of  your  little  child  may 
go  far  to  do  that.  "  What  of  the  child?  "  you 
say.  Well,  it  is  a  good  thing  even  for  the 
child  that  you  would  lay  down  your  life  to 
spare  the  little  one  a  pang  which  is  the  result 
of  your  wrongdoing.  If  there  is  any  good  in 
you  it  will  come  out  then,  and  as  for  the  child, 
why,  the  same  as  for  you  and  me  and  all  man- 
kind, vicarious  suffering  is  the  law  of  the 
higher  life — it  is  God's  doing,  and  not  man's. 

You  remember  in  Kingsley's  poem  the 
martyr  who,  to  save  her  husband  from  torture 
and  from  death,  recanted,  and  denied  the 
Christ.  The  rebuke  of  the  martyr  brought  her 
back  to  the  Cross  again,  and  she  says — or 
Charles  Kingsley  makes  her  say — "  I  saw  there 
was  but  one  right  thing  in  the  world  to  do,  and 


194     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

I  must  do  it."  Sometimes  for  the  highest  you 
have  had  to  sacrifice  your  dearest.  There  are 
times  when  you  feel  it  were  better  they  should 
be  afflicted  than  righteousness  should  be  com- 
promised. A  thousand  times  this  comes  in 
life;  it  is  of  God  that  men  suffer  for  other 
men's  sins.  Be  it  so ;  it  brings  us  to  Calvary 
and  to  the  fellowship  of  the  Crucified.  All 
Christ's  conquests  have  been  made  so.  Peter 
denied  his  Lord  to  escape  something,  and  when 
he  came  back  to  his  Lord  he  went  cheerfully 
forth  to  the  very  thing  he  had  lied  to  escape. 
Peter  died  upon  the  cross — tradition  says 
head  downward.  Did  he  ever  think  of  the 
moment  in  Pilate's  hall  when  he  denied  the 
Master  who  was  standing  at  the  whipping- 
post? Did  he  ever  think  of  the  moment  of 
deepest  repentance  when  he  went  out  and  wept 
bitterly?  Did  it  matter?  He  faced  the  worst; 
it  mattered  nothing  to  him  then,  so  that  he 
had  the  love  of  his  Lord. 

Sinners,  play  the  man!  Nothing  matters 
much  to  you  but  losing  the  love  of  God.  Be 
like  Peter — face  the  cross,  take  it  up!  Know 
this — God  never  meant  you  to  be  a  lost  soul, 
and  every  man  who  wills  to  live  the  righteous 
life  shall  have  his  chance.  What  of  the  great 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  the  least  of  all  the 


THE  LARGER  FORGIVENESS     195 

apostles,  he  says,  not  meet  to  be  called  an 
apostle  because  he  persecuted  the  Church  of 
God — remember  what  that  means?  Paul  tore 
the  father  from  his  child  and  the  husband  from 
his  wife,  he  broke  up  families,  he  sent  sorrow 
and  ruin  and  death  into  the  midst  thereof,  in 
the  name  of  religion;  and  then  he  came  to 
preach  Christ  himself !  If  Paul  could  only  have 
stood  on  the  other  side  of  the  stoning  of  Ste- 
phen, and  never  had  part  therein,  he  would 
have  been  glad,  I  trow.  And  yet  he  came  to 
Christ,  and  he  lived  to  say,  "  I  have  fought  the 
good  fight;  I  have  kept  the  faith;  I  am  ready 
to  be  offered." 

When  we  have  stood  with  Peter  and  Paul 
at  the  Cross  of  Christ,  and  looked  back,  we 
feel  that  the  Saviourhood  of  the  Master  is 
great  enough  for  all  things — that  which  hath 
been,  that  which  is;  that  the  best  robe  which 
was  for  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles  is  meant 
even  for  you  and  for  me,  though  we  have 
sinned  grievously  against  God  and  against 
each  other.  And  you  will  never  help  any  fel- 
low-creature by  remaining  in  sin.  Would  you 
save  your  brother  whom  you  tried  to  ruin? 
You  had  better  come  to  the  Cross  yourself. 
Would  you  undo  the  mischief  you  have  done? 
You  had  better  pay  over  your  record  into  the 


196     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

hands  of  Christ.  You  will  never  atone,  you 
will  never  undo ;  God  will.  Would  you  redeem 
the  time,  would  you  stand  with  the  "  multitude 
whom  no  man  can  number  "  around  the  throne 
of  God  in  heaven,  and  would  you  see  there 
some  whose  lives  are  dearer  to  you  than  your 
own,  yet  to  whom  you  have  caused  both  sorrow 
and  shame?  Then  rise  and  come  to  the 
Father ! 

Beloved,  I  feel  tempted  to  do  to-night  what 
I  have  never  done  in  this  church  or  in  any 
other,  and  that  is  to  ask  the  men  of  guilty 
lives  to  confess  before  the  whole  multitude  of 
God's  people  in  this  place  that  they  begin  again 
at  the  place  where  forgiveness  has  been  cove- 
nanted— the  Cross  of  Christ.  Say  in  silence 
what  I  think  I  must  not  ask  you  to  utter  openly, 
"  God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner! " 

Come  home!  There  is  joy  in  the  presence 
of  the  angels  of  God. 


XI 
THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD 


XI 
THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD 

A  man  shall  be  as  a  hiding-place  from  the  wind 
and  .  .  .  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land. — 
Isa.  xxxii.  a 

DR.  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH,  who  is 
perhaps  the  first  Hving  authority  on 
the  exegesis  of  Isaiah,  tells  us  that  the 
first  eight  verses  of  this  chapter  belong  to  what 
we  may  call  the  prophet's  escapes,  by  which  he 
means  a  period  of  special  inspiration  greater 
than  the  prophet  himself  knew,  a  moment  of 
unencumbered  vision,  a  long  forelook,  a  glo- 
rious anticipation  of  a  better  than  he  had 
ever  known.  Every  prophet  has  such  escapes, 
such  periods  of  special  and  exalted  insight,  and 
they  are  always  greater  than  the  prophet  him- 
self is  aware  of.  Compare  with  this  chapter, 
for  instance,  the  eighth  of  Romans,  where  St. 
Paul  seems  to  be  carried  away  upon  a  stream 
of  spiritual  imagery  and  marvellous  eloquence 
to  describe  a  greater  than  he  could  ever  hope 
to  see  himself  upon  this  side  of  death.  We  are 
199 


200     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

straining  our  eyes  to-day  towards  St.  Paul's 
vision  and  we  know  more  than  he  could  realise, 
but  he  saw  substantially  the  same  vision  as 
Isaiah  saw,  a  greater  than  either  prophet  knew. 
The  prophet,  speaking  to  his  own  time,  is  like 
a  lark  twittering  upon  the  ground  or  singing 
upon  a  branch.  The  prophet  speaking  for  all 
time  is  like  the  same  bird  singing  in  high 
heaven. 

Read  our  text,  then,  in  the  light  of  this 
scholar's  description  of  it,  and  see  if  it  does 
not  fire  our  imagination  too.  "  There  is  a 
time  coming,"  the  prophet  said,  "  a  time  com- 
ing when  a  man  shall  be  as  a  hiding-place  from 
the  wind  and  a  covert  from  the  tempest,  as 
rivers  of  water  in  a  dry  place,  as  the  shadow  of 
a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land."  Again  I  say  I 
can  hardly  think  Isaiah  knew  all  that  was  con- 
tained in  the  beautiful  utterance  of  this  match- 
less imagery. 

Now,  what  does  it  mean?  No  prophet  ever 
overstates  his  case,  although  he  may  not  know 
in  fulness  the  meaning  of  that  which  he  has 
seen  and  tried  to  express.  Here  is  just  a  mo- 
ment of  Divine  enthusiasm.  Isaiah  is  speaking 
to  decadent  Israel.  He  is  expostulating  with 
its  debased  manhood,  he  is  foretelling  calami- 
ties that  are  to  come  upon  his  native  land.    But 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    201 

he  sees  beyond  the  moment,  and  beyond  the 
trouble,  to  a  more  glorious  day,  and,  in  mak- 
ing an  appeal  for  a  higher  manhood,  he  passes 
from  request  into  declaration,  and  says,  in 
effect,  '*  I  see  it,  there  is  a  man  who  is  to  be 
a  hiding-place  from  the  wind  and  the  shadow 
of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.'* 

Every  one  of  you  would  say  at  once  this 
vision  was  really  and  only  fulfilled  in  Jesus 
Christ.  But  you  would  be  prepared  to  say 
along  with  me,  the  prophet  did  not  know 
about  any  Christ  when  he  spoke.  He  did  not 
foresee  what  we  now,  looking  back,  can  plainly 
see.  But  if  Isaiah  had  lived  and  had  taken  his 
place  alongside  of  the  little  group  that  heard 
Jesus  speak  on  the  hillsides  of  Galilee,  and  sat 
at  His  feet  in  the  upper  room,  what  do  you  sup- 
pose he  would  say  ?  "  Here  is  a  man,  a  man 
Divine  for  whom  our  hearts  have  been  yearn- 
ing, here  is  He  who  has  brought  us  God,  here 
is  One  at  the  same  time  strong  and  gentle,  in 
Whom  all  humankind  can  rest,  the  shadow  of 
a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land."  What  Isaiah 
would  have  said  you  and  I  can  say.  All  this 
is  true  and  reaches  its  highest  fulfilment  in  our 
Saviour  Christ. 

Examine  the  figure  a  little  more  closely. 
The  prophet,  as  you  see,  has  the  desert  in 


THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

mind,  and  every  Oriental  knows  what  that 
means  perhaps  better  than  we  who  live  in  this 
fruitful  country  can  ever  realise.  He  is  think- 
ing of  the  scorching  wind  which,  in  the  hotter 
months  of  the  year,  sweeps  like  a  desolation 
over  the  desert.  He  sees  in  imagination  a 
weary  company  of  pilgrims  threading  their  way 
through  it,  the  glaring  sun  beating  upon  them, 
the  hot  breath  of  fiery  flame  threatening  to  de- 
stroy them,  and  then  he  sees  a  mighty  rock  ris- 
ing in  the  midst  of  the  desert,  and  the  pilgrims 
nestling  beneath  its  shade.  Then  breaks  out  his 
figure  in  the  richness  of  its  imagery:  a  man 
should  be  like  this  rock  in  the  desert,  a  hiding- 
place  from  the  fury  of  the  tempest :  the  shadow 
of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land. 

Speaking  broadly,  I  say  no  one  would  deny 
that  Jesus  has  been  just  such  to  the  world  that 
lies  behind  us.  Many  and  many  a  thousand 
have  found  rest  in  His  great  name. 

**  It  woke  our  wondering  childhood 
To  muse  on  things  above, 
It  drew  our  harder  manhood 
With  cords  of  mighty  love." 

Oh,  how  many  have  been  able  to  say  (we 
do  not  say  why,  we  simply  note  the  fact  it 
has  been  so)  that  Jesus  Christ  has  been  to 
them  the  fulfilment  of  ail  their  highest  aspira- 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    203 

tions.  He  has  been  to  them  the  goal  of  all 
noblest  hope.  Jesus  has  been  as  "  a  hiding- 
place  from  the  wind  and  the  shadow  of  a  great 
rock  in  a  weary  land." 

••  Beneath  the  cross  of  Jesus 

I  fain  would  take  my  stand, 
The  shadow  of  a  mighty  rock 

Within  a  weary  land, 
A  home  within  the  wilderness, 

A  rest  upon  the  way, 
From  the  burning  of  the  noontide  heat 

And  the  burden  of  the  day." 

Just  exercise  your  not  too  vivid  Anglo- 
Saxon  imagination  for  one  moment  and  think, 
as  you  look  back  on  the  line  of  history,  how 
many  people  in  nineteen  centuries  have  had 
this  experience  and  sung  this  song.  The 
prophet  never  saw  further  than  the  truth,  and 
the  truth  was  greater  than  the  prophet.  Christ 
Jesus  has  been  to  humanity,  and  is  still,  the 
Rock  of  Ages. 

But  it  is  in  no  merely  general  sense  that  I 
would  employ  these  words.  Jesus  Christ  is 
more  than  of  general  interest  for  us,  and  I 
mean  every  man  when  I  say  "  us."  The  words 
of  Isaiah  are  true  just  this  moment,  and  I  will 
try  to  show  you  in  what  sense  they  are  true  for 
our  day  and  for  you  and  for  me. 

Many  questions  are  asked  concerning  the 


^04     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

person  of  our  blessed  Lord.  To-day  nearly  all 
religious  controversy  seems  to  centre  about 
His  sacred  head.  And  I  know  quite  well  that 
many  a  young  fellow  must  be  perplexed  to 
know  what  to  think  concerning  Him  about 
Whom  all  men  in  our  day  and  generation  and 
beloved  country  must  think.  We  have  to  take 
account  of  Christ,  whether  we  will  or  no.  Now 
then,  listen  to  this  question.  One  young  fel- 
low comes  to  me  and  says,  "  I  am  bewildered 
to  know  just  where  the  humanity  of  Christ 
leaves  off  and  His  divinity  begins.  It  is  such 
a  perplexing  question  as  to  be  all  but  impass- 
able. I  feel  that  one  fails  in  the  presence  of  it. 
Can  you  give  me  any  satisfaction  ?  '^  Another 
comes  and  says,  "  You  preach  a  supernatural 
Christ.  I  suppose  that  is  the  Christ  of  the  gos- 
pel, but  I  feel,  having  to  fight  the  battles  that  I 
must  fight,  and  meet  the  temptations  that  I 
must  meet,  that  a  purely  human  Jesus  would 
be  of  much  more  help  to  me,  a  man,  a  con- 
queror, yet  one  of  like  passions  with  myself." 
I  am  speaking  now  what  I  do  know  when  I  say 
some  feel  that  a  purely  human  Christ,  victor 
over  temptation  and  over  sorrow  and  over 
wrong,  noble,  unselfish,  and  pure,  would  be  a 
greater  help  to  them  than  the  ecclesiastical 
Christ  who  is  too  often  presented. 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    W5 

Well  then,  listen  to  me.  Precisely  the  Christ 
of  whom  you  are  in  search  is  the  Christ  of 
the  gospel.  Do  not  talk  any  more  nonsense 
about  the  point  where  humanity  leaves  off  and 
divinity  begins,  or  divinity  leaves  off  and  hu- 
manity begins.  Christ  is  all  human — ^human 
all  the  time.  Divine  all  the  time.  He  is  your 
brother,  He  is  also  more  than  that.  He  is  your 
God.  There  is  nothing  in  Christ  that  is  foreign 
to  what  you  and  I  aspire  to  know  in  our  God. 
And  yet  Christ  is  as  completely  human  as  you. 
Pardon  me,  I  have  even  understated  my  case. 
He  is  more  human  than  you  are.  The  only 
Man  whom  the  world  has  ever  seen  is  your 
Christ  and  mine,  human  as  you.  Your  hu- 
manity will  only  come  to  its  own  when  it 
aspires  to  His  and  is  represented  in  it.  Re- 
member, there  is  no  dividing  line  between  the 
deity  and  the  humanity  of  our  blessed  Lord. 
He  is  both,  and  both  are  one.  The  Christ  of 
the  gospel  is  just  your  Christ,  the  Christ  you 
are  seeking,  the  Christ  you  need.  "  A  man 
shall  be  as  a  hiding-place  from  the  wind,  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land." 

This  Divine  Man  has  intercepted  on  the 
desert  of  history  the  scorching  breath  of  sin 
for  many  a  penitent,  this  Divine  Man  is  "  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  "  to  many  thousands 


206     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

in  wo  rid- weariness,  this  Divine  Man  at  this 
hour  is  fulfilHng  this  same  great  function,  this 
dual  function.  Brother  and  Redeemer  He. 

••  And  lo,  from  sin  and  grief  and  shame, 
I  hide  me,  Jesus,  in  Thy  name." 

Faith  in  Christ  is  a  fact — a  fact  that  can  never 
be  ignored  by  one  who  would  know  human 
nature.  It  has  made  and  still  makes  "  a  shel- 
ter in  the  time  of  storm."  You  cannot  surely 
read  the  New  Testament  without  gathering 
from  it  the  impression,  or  something  of  the 
impression,  that  the  simple  man  felt  as  he  first 
drew  near  to  Jesus.  Men  with  similar  prob- 
lems to  yours  and  mine  have  felt  Him  to  be 
not  only  gracious  but  strong.  They  felt  the 
spell  of  his  personality,  felt  His  disinterested- 
ness. His  unearthly  nobleness,  and  it  was  this 
Jesus,  this  personal  Jesus,  about  Whom  men 
did  not  frame  any  theories  beyond  this,  that 
they  knew  He  was  the  expression  of  God.  It 
was  this  human  Jesus  Whom  now  we  worship 
as  the  Jesus  Divine.  A  deathless  trust  in  that 
ever-loving  Christ  is  the  wisest  investment  of 
your  life. 

Now,  to  go  one  step  further,  your  manhood 
and  mine  is  to  be  shaped  by  the  manhood  of 
Christ  if  we  would  really  solve  the  riddle  of 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    207 

life  and  fulfil  the  purpose  for  which  we  were 
created.  The  true  manhood  is  the  manhood 
which  is  the  product  of  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
It  is  but  seldom  that  you  and  I  ever  meet  a 
manhood  under  which  the  weak  can  shelter. 
I  remember  being  profoundly  impressed  some 
years  ago  when  a  dear  friend  of  mine,  Dr. 
Horton,  of  Hampstead,  was  celebrating  the 
twenty-first  anniversary  of  his  ministry. 
There  came  amongst  the  speakers,  in  addi- 
tion to  myself,  an  Oxford  friend  of  Dr. 
Horton,  who  made  a  public  confession  some- 
thing like  this.  It  can  do  no  harm  to  state  it, 
for  he  said  it  himself  in  the  presence  of  the 
great  throng. 

"  There  are  many  of  us,"  said  this  scholar 
and  gentleman,  "  who  have  lost  our  way  amid 
the  great  religious  problems  of  life,  though 
we  have  never,  I  trust,  forsaken  the  Christian 
ideal  of  living.  To  such  men  as  we  are,  men 
with  no  clear  vision  upon  the  promise  of  life, 
this  ministry  of  this  man  has  been  as  '  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.*  " 

I  felt  that  it  was  true  of  my  friend,  must  be 
true  of  such  a  life  as  his,  so  unselfish,  so  de- 
vout, so  Christ-like.  But  what  made  that  man- 
hood? We  know.  Only  one  thing,  only  one 
influence,  and  that  a  living  one.     Mind  you, 


WS     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

it  was  the  Christ  to  Whom  I  am  calling  you, 
that  Christ  Whom  Isaiah  dimly  foreknew,  the 
Christ  Whom  at  this  very  moment  you  and  I 
are  facing,  some  in  unfaith,  some  in  wistful 
yearning,  some  in  blissful  trust.  The  living- 
Christ  made  my  friend's  manhood  "  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land." 

Consider  how  seldom  it  is  possible  to  say, 
even  in  the  twentieth  century,  that  any  ordi- 
nary character  is  as  "  the  shadow  of  a  great 
rock  in  a  weary  land."  How  few  the  Christ 
is  permitted  to  shape,  and  oh,  how  many  might 
be  shaped  by  that  Master  hand,  if  they  would. 
On  the  contrary,  the  manhood  that  we  know 
may  be  strong  or  it  may  be  weak,  but  it  is 
not  Divine.  You  have  met  only  yesterday, 
perhaps,  a  man  who  could  break  you,  you  feel 
he  could,  by  the  strength  of  his  will,  the  rug- 
gedness  and  indomitableness  of  his  selfish  de- 
sire. We  know  these  men  in  business.  Strong, 
are  they  not,  strong  for  evil,  sometimes  not 
knowing  it,  sometimes  altogether  indifferent 
to  it,  sometimes  deliberately  setting  about  it, 
the  strong,  strong  men.  You  would  not  call 
them  noble.  You  feel  sometimes  that  this  Is  a 
bad  world  for  the  weak.  You  cannot  afford  to 
be  weak,  for,  oddly  enough,  just  such  a  man 
as  I  have  described  is  the  man  who  gets  on 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    209 

easiest.  Men  let  him  alone,  they  are  afraid 
of  him.  He  is  like  the  rock  upon  which  a  ship 
might  be  dashed  in  a  storm  and  be  broken  up, 
but  not  the  rock  under  which  a  man  can  shelter 
and  the  weary  find  rest.  You  may  have  found 
that  to  your  cost.  Compare  it  with  the  man- 
hood of  Christ.  No,  leave  it  a  moment,  I  will 
come  back,  I  will  show  you  how  the  Christ 
would  deal  with  such  strength  as  that.  You 
have  seen  the  beasts  of  the  field,  it  may  be, 
turning  on  one  of  their  number  which  has 
fallen  sick ;  they  destroy  it — a  figure  of  human 
life.  We  trample  down  the  weak.  Let  it  be 
understood,  let  it  be  even  suspected  that  a  man 
can  be  assailed,  can  be  overthrown,  and  woe 
betide  him.  In  your  business  house,  young 
man,  let  it  be  suspected  that  you  can  be 
squeezed — permit  the  word — into  the  mould 
of  another  man's  will,  and  squeezed  you  will 
be.  Let  it  be  understood  that  you  are  ready  to 
take  the  side  of  the  strong,  and  upon  that  side 
you  will  be  compelled  to  go,  whether  you  wish 
it  or  whether  you  do  not.  Let  it  be  under- 
stood that  you  are  liable  to  defeat,  that  your 
principles  are  not  strong  enough  to  upbear 
you,  and  you  will  have  tenfold  the  more  bat- 
tles to  fight  than  the  man  who  has  fought 
his  battle  once  for  all,  and  against  whom  it  is 


210     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

hopeless  for  the  evil  man  to  fight.  What  shall 
I  say  about  a  remedy,  a  hope,  for  the  man 
who  feels  himself  to  be  weak  and  finds  him- 
self on  the  battlefield  exposed  against  that 
which  is  strong?  I  will  show  you.  I  have 
just  now  promised  to  do  so.  Have  you  ever 
seen  a  man,  a  real  man,  against  whose  char- 
acter no  reproach  could  be  hurled,  who  was 
guilty  of  no  petty  vanity,  no  sinful  pride,  no 
vainglory,  no  self-seeking? — ^he  is  rather  a 
rara  avis,  I  know^ — may  I  bring  in  my  friend's 
name — one  like  the  minister  of  Hampstead? 
"  The  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.'* 
Bring  all  your  battalions  and  try  what  you 
can  do  with  such  a  man. 

Let  the  world's  strong  man  do  his  worst,  I 
know  a  stronger,  and  he  is  the  spiritual  man, 
the  manhood  in  which  weakness  can  shelter, 
the  manhood  that  is  formed  in  the  spirit  and 
in  the  image  of  our  blessed  Lord,  the  manhood, 
indeed,  which  is  enthroned  in  the  universe, 
overlooked  and  sustained  by  the  manhood  of 
Jesus  Christ.  I  have  met  such  men,  and  in 
very  obscure  walks  of  life,  too,  and  I  have  seen 
evil  broken  upon  them.  They  have  been  rocks 
like  battlements,  against  which  sin  has  hurled 
itself  in  vain.  Belief  in  Christ  involves  such 
manhood,  a  manhood  that  does  not  trample 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    211 

upon  the  weak,  but  a  manhood  that  shelters  it, 
a  manhood  that  beheves  in  humanity  and  will 
sacrifice  to  save  it. 

I  remember  when  I  was  in  Italy  a  sight  that 
moved  my  English  sympathies  very  much.  It 
was  during  the  visit  of  President  Loubet  to 
Rome.  In  the  procession,  a  military  proces- 
sion, with  dazzling  uniforms  and  military  gew- 
gaws, I  saw  one  carriage  containing  a  group  of 
grizzled  veterans  wearing  red  shirts.  It 
flashed  upon  me  at  once  that  these  old  fellows 
must  have  been  the  followers  of  Garibaldi,  so 
with  English  audacity  I  went  up  and  stopped 
the  carriage  and  asked  them  whether  it  were 
so.  The  old  men  were  pleased.  They  asked 
me  what  countryman  I  was,  which  was  not 
just  obvious  at  the  moment,  and  I  told  them. 
"  Ah,"  said  one  of  them,  "  in  that  trying  hour 
England  was  the  friend  of  Garibaldi."  Eng- 
land was.  Why?  Because  he  was  a  man. 
Victor  Emmanuel  was  seated  upon  the  throne 
of  a  united  Italy,  almost  against  his  will,  by  a 
m^an  who  knew  how  to  do  and  dare.  While 
politicians  were  scheming  and  plotting  and 
hesitating.  Garibaldi  landed  and  trusted  the 
patriotism  of  his  countrymen.  These  old  men 
told  me  they  had  followed  him  in  all  his  cam- 
paigns, had  marched  with  him  to  victory,  had 


212     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

seen  Emmanuel  crowned  first  king  of  modern 
Italy.  He  was  only  king;  their  hero,  almost 
their  god,  was  Garibaldi.  The  utterance  of 
his  name,  the  wearing  of  his  uniform,  was  to 
them  an  incentive  to  higher  manhood,  and  they 
looked  men  indeed. 

Young  fellows,  I  thought  about  the  days 
when  Garibaldi  had  fought  a  battle  single- 
handed,  and  such  men  as  these  came  over  to 
his  side.  You  have  heard,  profiably,  about 
the  city  in  middle  Italy  which  surrendered 
without  a  blow,  although  its  walls  had  been 
manned  against  him  by  the  Italian  soldiers. 
They  were  told  to  fire  on  Garibaldi  if  he  and 
his  redshirts  should  assault  it,  and  they  stood  to 
their  guns  all  day  long  waiting  for  the  assault 
of  the  patriot  army,  prepared  to  obey  orders,  no 
doubt.  Toward  evening  they  saw  upon  the 
horizon  a  cloud  of  dust  rising.  The  word  was 
passed,  "  It  is  coming,  the  army  of  Garibaldi." 
The  guns  were  primed  and  directed  upon  the 
spot  against  which  the  supposed  assault  would 
be  made,  but  no  assault  came.  The  cloud  of 
dust  grew  no  bigger.  It  came  nearer,  and  the 
Italian  mercenaries  saw  that  there  was  only  a 
carriage  drawn  by  a  single  horse,  and  in  it 
sat  a  single  man.  And  as  it  came  near  the 
gates  of  the  Italian  town  they  saw  the  man  rise 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    213 

upon  his  feet  and  stand  with  folded  arms,  fac- 
ing the  town  that  expected  the  attack.  They 
had  not  expected  an  attack  hke  that.  A  shout 
broke  forth  and  passed  round  the  walls,  *'  Gari- 
baldi, Garibaldi  himself  and  alone !  "  They 
knew  it  was  no  use  resisting  such  a  man  as  he. 
They  could  fire  if  they  liked,  but  if  they  did 
they  murdered  Italy.  So  the  gates  were  flung 
open  with  cheering  and  weeping ;  they  took  the 
patriot  to  their  hearts.  What  did  it?  you  say. 
A  manhood — yes,  a  manhood  with  a  record. 
That  man  dared  in  person  for  his  country's 
sake,  that  man  had  dared  many  deaths,  that 
man  had  put  everything  on  the  altar  of  his 
country's  good,  and  they  saw  it  in  his  scarred 
hands  and  weather-beaten  face,  and  they  could 
not  resist  the  manhood  that  hitherto  had  been 
uncrowned,  the  manhood  that  now  was  in  their 
midst.  Almost  any  other  man  than  Garibaldi 
might  have  risen  against  those  walls,  and  they 
would  not  have  fallen. 

I  see  here  a  figure,  yes,  a  not  unsuitable 
figure,  of  my  Master's  record,  too.  Christ  is  in 
heaven,  it  is  true.  But  once  He  was  on  earth 
in  the  flesh;  He  is  on  earth  in  the  spirit  now. 
But  when  men  saw  Him  some  of  them  jeered 
and  hooted  Him.  Some  of  them  added  to 
His  agony  on  Calvary,  some  of  them  repu- 


214      THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

diated  Him  out  of  selfish  hate,  but  some  of 
them  loved  Him  better  than  life.  They  could 
not  ignore  Him.  Wherever  Jesus  v^^ent  they 
felt  there  was  a  man,  and  that  manhood  con- 
quered when  it  died.  The  Cross  of  Christ  it 
was  that  gave  the  victory.  Like  Garibaldi, 
Jesus  has  been  moving  since  against  the  citadel 
of  a  selfish  world,  and  human  hearts  have  been 
flung  open  to  Him  one  by  one.  But  it  was  be- 
cause of  the  crown  of  thorns  and  the  pierced 
side,  it  was  because  of  the  sufifering  manhood 
that  now  we  are  responding  to  the  glorified 
manhood  which  rules  from  heaven.  That  is 
the  manhood  that  is  making  such  manhood  as 
I  have  been  describing  to  you,  "  a  hiding-place 
from  the  wind  and  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock 
in  a  weary  land.'' 

The  sentiment  of  brotherhood  is  abroad  to- 
day. Do  not  believe  in  any  brotherhood  which 
is  not  founded  upon  the  manhood  of  Jesus 
Christ.  There  are  other  types  of  manhood 
abroad.  You  know  what  I  mean.  There  is 
the  literature  of  the  cynic,  the  cynic  rebuking 
sin,  the  most  ghastly  spectacle  of  our  time. 
There  is  the  literature  morally  destructive  in 
tendency,  which  would  break  down  all  the 
fabric  of  historic  Christianity,  and  would 
trample  upon  everything  associated  with  the 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    215 

name  of  Jesus.  I  warn  you  solemnly  against 
it.  Judge  ye  which  is  the  higher  manhood,  the 
manhood  of  the  cynic,  which  refuses  to  believe 
in  a  better  day  for  poor  humanity ;  the  manhood 
of  the  cynic,  who  repudiates  nobleness  in  any 
and  every  form,  or  the  manhood  inspired  by 
loyalty  to  Jesus  Christ.  I  want  you  to  be 
Christ's  men,  and  I  do  not  think  that  one  should 
always  plead  in  vain.  Some  of  these  days  I  ex- 
pect to  see  this  fair  young  manhood,  all  un- 
formed as  yet,  stand  boldly  forth  for  Jesus 
Christ.  But  I  would  not  have  you  come  out  to 
make  an  empty  profession.  It  means  the  living 
of  a  life ;  belief  in  Jesus  Christ  means  that  man- 
hood will  be  tested  indeed.  You  go  out  to  be 
His  ministers  in  every  department  where  God 
has  called  you  and  sent  you  to  serve.  You 
go  at  your  own  cost,  you  go  at  great  risk,  you 
fight  His  battles,  in  His  name  you  do  it  for 
love's  sake,  and  have  no  hope  of  reward  ex- 
cept the  Master's  "  Well  done  "  by  and  by.  But 
humanity  is  longing,  sighing,  praying.  Men  are 
calling  for  a  higher  manhood,  the  manhood  of 
Jesus.    Oh,  show  it  to  them,  I  beseech  you. 

"  'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength  that  I  cry  for  !  my  flesh 
that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead !  I  seek  and  I  find  it.    O  Saul,  it 
shall  be 


216     THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  HIGHEST 

A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee;  a  Man  like 

to  me 
Thou  Shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,  forever  !    A  Hand 

like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee  !     See 

the  Christ  stand  !  " 


If  a  man  sets  himself  to  change  for  the  better 
any  situation,  any  atmosphere  in  which  he  has 
to  live  and  to  labour,  he  can  do  it — he  can  do 
it,  and  I  will  tell  you  why.  It  is  because  he 
knows  what  he  means,  and  the  man  who  knows 
what  he  wants  and  is  willing  to  give  himself 
for  it,  is  pretty  sure  to  get  it.  It  is  also  because 
he  knows  he  is  right.  No  strength  of  evil  can 
contend  against  the  man  who  knows  clearly 
what  is  right  and  is  determined  to  serve  it. 

But  there  are  enormous  differences  nowa- 
days between  the  men  whom  God  is  summon- 
ing to  high  service.  One  rises,  another  sinks. 
Why?  It  is  just  faith,  the  presence  or  the 
absence  of  faith  in  the  ideal  manhood.  Try 
what  faith  can  do,  you  who  listen  to  me  to- 
night— faith  in  the  sheltering  manhood  of  Jesus 
Christ.  It  will  make  you  such  as  God  has 
called  you  to  be.    Believe  it,  I  entreat  you. 

**  O  Lord  and  Master  of  us  all, 
Whate'er  our  name  or  sign, 
We  own  Thy  sway,  we  hear  Thy  call, 
We  test  our  lives  by  Thine." 


THE  SHELTERING  MANHOOD    217 

Henry  Drummond  was  fond  of  telling  a  story 
of  a  university  student  who  set  himself  to  save 
another  man.  He  knew  the  odds  were  against 
him,  but  he  did  it,  and  the  man  is  living  to-day 
as  a  monument  of  his  self-sacrificing  work.  It 
meant  being  laughed  at  for  his  pains,  it  meant 
sitting  up  at  nights  and  watching  for  his 
drunken  friend.  It  meant  testifying  for  him  in 
open  court  even  in  the  presence  of  those  who 
once  believed  in  him,  but  he  conquered.  It  was 
worth  his  while.  One  kind  of  manhood  was 
pitted  against  another,  and  the  stronger  con- 
quered because  the  more  Divine. 

Oh,  young  men,  you  might  be  such.  Yours 
can  either  be  the  manhood  that  leans  or  the 
manhood  that  stands;  the  manhood  that  is 
pitied  or  the  manhood  that  has  some  pity  to 
spare  for  others.  Which  shall  it  be?  The 
manhood  of  Christ,  that,  that  and  nothing  less. 
"  A  man  shall  be  as  a  hiding-place  from  the 
wind  and  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a 
weary  land.'' 


THE   END 


THTH    ^V\rORK:8     OF 

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